


Interlude

by pierrot_dreams



Series: The Golden Bird [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Forced Prostitution, M/M, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Underage Prostitution, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22137124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pierrot_dreams/pseuds/pierrot_dreams
Summary: Nobody was going to make Asher Lacey do anything he didn't want to do. Especially not the whore who wouldn't stop trying to take care of him...[A/N: This is is a prequel to The Golden Bird, intended to serve as an intermission of sorts between Part I and Part II.]
Series: The Golden Bird [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495721
Comments: 43
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter contains the sexual abuse of minors (Asher is 15; Luca is 16) and one minor assisting in the rape of another.

_Two years ago_

Asher did not want to open his eyes. As long as he kept them closed, he could pretend this was all a dream. (A horrible dream. A nightmare, the worst one he’d ever had.) When he woke up, he’d be home on his own cot with his brothers snoring on either side of him, not curled up on whorehouse sheets soaked with—he didn’t want to think about what they were soaked with.

He could smell it, though. Smell the man who—no.

Asher heard the door creak open and bolted upright, hands convulsing into fists. He was so expecting to see the man that for a moment his brain couldn’t make sense of the person in the doorway. Too small, not at all the right shape.

Then the image snapped together. He was looking at a boy his own age, maybe younger. A barbarian—only weren’t barbarians supposed to be enormous? This one was girl-sized. He looked like a girl, too, with his long hair and his soft face. Too pretty to be anything but a—

“Whore,” Asher blurted out.

If the boy was bothered by Asher’s bluntness, he didn’t show it. A washtray occupied his hands, so heavy his arms trembled. In one fluid movement, he knocked the door shut with a skinny hip and knelt to put down the tray.

“You aren’t supposed to be on the bed after the client leaves,” said the boy. He had a whisper-light voice that lilted up, as if shaping a question.

 _Fuck that_ , thought Asher. He wasn’t going to be bossed by some girl-faced barbarian whore. He’d leave the bed when he was good and ready.

To make the point, he yawned and tried to stretch. The yawn turned into a hiss as all the battered parts of his body came alive and began to throb.

“You’re sore,” said the boy sympathetically. He took a pot of green sludge from the tray. “This’ll help.”

Asher wrinkled his nose. Still, he’d have a better chance when the overseer came back if he didn’t hurt so damn much.

But when Asher reached for the salve, the boy pulled it away with a look of apology.

“You need to wash first,” the boy said. “If you want, I could help—”

“ _No_ ,” said Asher, too loudly. “Don’t touch me.”

As much as Asher didn’t want to follow a slave’s orders, he was also desperate to scrub the man off of him. He forced himself off the bed, trying not to move like a whipped dog. Fields of buggered bleeding hell, he was sore. Pain throbbed in his most intimate places.

Asher didn’t look at the boy. He didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes.

“What’s your name?” asked the boy as Asher yanked the washtray to him.

“Asher,” he said shortly, wringing out the rag with unnecessary force. In his mind, he saw the man’s thick red neck between this hands.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” said the boy, pathetically earnest. “I hope the master lets you keep it.”

What a stupid thing to say. Asher’s name was his. Nobody could take it away from him, especially not the fat fuck who locked a collar around his neck and left him in this room to be—no.

Asher grabbed the sliver of soap from the tray and set about scrubbing himself down. He hoped that his silence would shut down any further attempts at conversation, but apparently barbarians really were as brainless as everyone said.

“I’m Luca,” said the boy.

He was fiddling with the ends of his hair, twisting a braid. He had small hands tapering into wrists ringed with bruises in various stages of healing.

“Did I fucking ask?” Asher spat.

The braid went taut in the boy’s fingers. He flushed and dropped his eyes.

“Sorry, I—sorry.”

It was like kicking a kitten, or stomping a fledgling fallen out of the nest. Asher’s brothers liked that kind of sport, but he’d never seen the point of hurting something that couldn’t fight back.

“How old are you, anyway?” he asked.

It wasn’t a difficult question, but the boy—Luca—wrinkled his brow, as if the answer eluded him.

“Fifteen?” he said, clearly guessing. “Or maybe older now. Please, what season is it?”

Asher rolled his eyes. Was this slave really so stupid he didn’t know the time of year?

Then Asher remembered the torchlit corridors he’d been dragged down, the glimpse he’d had of palazzo walls with windows boarded over before the doors closed behind him.

“Winter,” he said. “It’s winter.”

“Oh,” said Luca, looking surprised. “I must be sixteen, then.”

 _Sixteen_. Fucking hell, he was a whole year older than Asher. It wasn’t just Luca’s size that made him seem young, either. There was something disturbingly childlike about his submissiveness, how eager he was to please. Maybe he really was simple. Or mad. Asher had only been in this place for one night and he already felt a little mad himself.

That thought pealed like a harsh note. Asher was suddenly, acutely aware of his nakedness. He could see the traces the man had left on his skin, the marks from where he’d been pinned. His wrists would look like Luca’s in the morning.

Bitterness rose in his throat. The man hadn’t needed to hold him down. Asher had been barely conscious with whatever the overseer had dosed him with. The vial of liquid forced between his teeth had left him limp, heavy-headed, the world thickening around him like syrup. When the man started touching him, Asher had been too weak to fight.

 _Next time_ , Asher promised himself. Next time he’d claw the fucker’s face off. He’d make him wish he’d never been born.

Abruptly, Asher realized that Luca was watching him. His eyes were too big for his face. It was creepy. Like being stared at by a doll.

Asher grabbed for a sheet and pulled it tight around his shoulders. He needed to put a barrier between them. If he could, he’d build an iron wall around himself that nobody could see through.

“I won’t be here long,” said Asher. “Da’s going to get me out. You’ll see.”

Luca smiled, a nervous quirk of his lips.

“All right,” he said.

Asher could tell that Luca didn’t believe him. He ground his teeth, trying to convince himself he wasn’t bothered. Who cared what some stupid slave thought, anyway?

Still, Asher might’ve pressed the point if she door hadn’t opened. The fat fuck waddled in—Boq, the debt-broker had called him. A willowy slave with a curtain of black hair followed at a respectful distance.

Behind them, Asher could see the overseer skulking in the doorway. He had a bandage wrapped around his hand. Asher remembered sinking his teeth so deep into the man’s palm that he felt the bits inside grind together like bones in a butcher’s grist. From the overseer’s glare, he was remembering the same thing.

Asher scrambled back, pulling the sheet tighter. When Boq entered, Luca had moved at once to kneel; now he shot Asher a warning look from under his lashes. Asher supposed he was supposed to kneel as well.

_Not fucking likely._

Boq folded his hands over the hill of his gut. With the housecoat and elaborate wig, he could’ve passed for someone’s pregnant aunt.

“I’m pleased to see you still in one piece,” said Boq in his poncy fake accent. “After your dreadful attitude yesterday, I feared that Delegate Morse might be forced to take drastic measures.”

 _Morse._ That was the man’s name. Asher filed it away.

“He drugged me,” said Asher, jutting his chin at the overseer. “Good thing, too, or I’d’ve bit that fucker’s cock off.”

Asher heard Luca gasp. In a moment, the dark-haired slave had crossed the room and dragged Asher to his knees by the hair. Before Asher could shove him away, the slave dealt him an ear-ringing slap.

“How dare you speak that way in front of your master,” he hissed.

Asher touched his cheek. He felt heat in the shape of the slave’s hand.

Nobody hit Zinar Lacey’s son.

Asher was fast, but Luca was faster. He grabbed Asher’s fist and dragged his arm down.

“ _Please_ ,” he whispered urgently. “You don’t know what you’re doing—”

A small explosion over Asher’s ear knocked him sideways. He registered the overseer standing over him, one red-knuckled hand curled. In the other he held a thick leather strap.

Even as the overseer ripped the sheet away and threw him on his fours, Asher didn’t believe this could be happening to him. He was Zinar Lacey’s son. Nobody would dare.

Then the overseer raised the strap above his head and brought it down on Asher’s back, and all thought of Da fell away as he screamed, really screamed, for the first time since he’d been sold.

At first Asher tried to keep count of the blows. He thought that might make it easier, giving each one a number. Numbers meant an end, after all. Numbers meant it would be over.

But it didn’t end. It went on and on until the screams that split Asher’s ears went shrill with panic.

Finally, the overseer stepped back. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

A shadow fell over Asher. Boq, shaking his head as though someone had just given him bad news.

“That attitude really will get you in no end of trouble,” he sighed.

Asher spat at him.

The overseer started again. This time Asher passed out before the end.

Asher would never know how long he was in the room. There was no window, no clock, no way to tell the hours from the days.

At the beginning, the dark-haired slave came to talk to him. His name was Bagoas. He had long painted fingernails and a lot of stupid opinions on how a slave ought to behave.

Asher had no intention of behaving, thank you very fucking much. When he told Bagoas that, the man sighed and swept out of the room.

The overseer came in. He carried a bucket of water and a club.

Once, when Asher was a kid, he and his brothers had fought another gang on the quay. For territory, maybe, or over a slight; he couldn’t remember now. A boy with a cinderblock fist had punched Asher right into the water. He only had time to register _dark_ and _cold_ and _can’t breathe_ before Simon pulled him out.

But Simon was gone, and there was no one to save Asher when the overseer pushed his head under.

The overseer pulled him up and let him cough up the water at the back of his throat. Then he hauled Asher to his knees with one hand and unbuttoned the placket of his breeches with the other.

“Are you going to suck my cock, or are we going to have to go again?”

Asher spat out a wad of mucus.

“Go again,” he rasped.

Luca was the one who cleaned Asher up. He moved so quietly that Asher didn’t even hear him enter. It wasn’t until cool fingers brushed Asher’s curls back from his forehead and he heard the worried, whispery voice that he knew the overseer was gone.

“It doesn’t have to be this bad,” said Luca, half-pleading, as he rubbed the knotted place between Asher’s shoulders. “If you just give him what he wants—”

“Not bloody likely,” Asher managed to rasp.

Luca sighed. Strange how he could look so young and so old at the same time.

Asher didn’t give the overseer what he wanted. He wouldn’t. He said _No_ every time. _No_ and _Fuck you_ and _Try, I’ll bite it off_. He swore at the man in every tongue he knew. The beatings and drownings that followed didn’t even feel like a punishment. They were proof that Asher was winning. He was still a Lacey. Still a man.

When Da came to get him, Asher thought, he would be proud.

But Da didn’t come. It went on and on, until Asher’s throat was so raw he couldn’t scream anymore, but Da never came.

The overseer didn’t have to bother tying him now. Asher hadn’t eaten in—days? It felt like weeks. He still said _No_ every time, but the word had lost its meaning. It was just the sound that Asher was supposed to make. Sometimes he even forgot why.

“You know, there are worse places than this,” said the overseer conversationally, pulling Asher’s head from the bucket. “Just ask Luca.”

But that was a lie. It had to be. There was nowhere worse than this.

Light slanted through Asher’s slit-open eyes. His face was wet. _From the water,_ he told himself. Laceys didn’t cry.

In the background, Bagoas’s voice rose and fell like the whine of a mosquito. Asher heard the overseer’s put-upon growl.

“—strict instructions not to damage him beyond repair!”

“—alive, isn’t he?”

“—doesn’t start cooperating—”

“—easier to sell him.”

A gentle hand fell on the back of Asher’s neck. By now he recognized Luca’s touch instinctively. Despite himself, Asher arched into it.

Luca leaned down. The silky ends of his hair tickled Asher’s cheek.

“Nobody will know you fought,” he whispered.

Asher jerked back. Tried to speak, but his voice failed him. He swallowed and tried again.

“What d’you mean?”

“There are places where the beds have chains and the floors drain into the quay. If you die there, nobody will know you fought. You’ll just be dead, and the debt still won’t be paid.”

“Fuck you,” Asher whispered.

“But if you live—” Luca’s hand tightened on the back of Asher’s neck. “If you live, you’ll get to see your family again.”

 _Fuck you,_ Asher wanted to say. But this time the words shriveled to ashes in his mouth.

Asher didn’t stop fighting. Not at first, anyway. Not all at once. But Luca’s words had lodged themselves at the back of his mind. He heard them repeat on an endless singsong loop. _You’ll get to see your family again. If you live. If you live. If you live…_

“Go again?” said the overseer cheerfully, pulling Asher’s head from the bucket.

“No,” Asher gasped. And then, when the overseer pushed him back down, “No, fuck, don’t, don’t—I’ll do it.”

The overseer’s bark of laughter was equal parts astonishment and relief. He pushed himself to his feet and reached down to unlace his breeches.

Asher rubbed his palms on his knees. He was sweating; he didn’t know why.

“Have you done this before?” asked the overseer conversationally, pulling out his soft cock.

Asher nodded. He’d fooled around with a few of the neighborhood boys—nothing serious, and it was nearly always him getting sucked, but after complaints were made about the lack of reciprocity he’d made what he thought was a pretty valiant effort at putting his mouth to work. It wasn’t like with girls, all soft and melting under his tongue. The taste was sharper, bitter even, with a slimy aftertaste that made his throat feel infected.

Of course, it hadn’t mattered then whether Asher was any good at it or not. Laceys didn’t suck cocks they didn’t want to suck. He’d just assumed that the other boys felt lucky to be getting head from him at all.

The overseer jerked himself in quick workmanlike strokes. He was much bigger than Asher’s friends.

“All right, get to it,” said the overseer, shaking his cockstand at Asher.

Asher very seriously considered biting him. But he’d come this far. He’d said he would do it, and he would. It was easier if he pretended that this was a dare—just a stupid dare, like throwing mud at a Watchman or poking a drunk with a stick.

When Da came for Asher, he didn’t need to know.

Luca brought him food after. Asher wanted to throw it in his face. Instead he gobbled it down like a starving animal, because he was hungry, hungrier than he could ever remember being, and because he could still taste the overseer at the back of his throat.

Once he was finished, he was still hungry, and he could still taste the overseer.

“I want seconds,” he said, shoving the bowl at Luca.

“What’s seconds?” asked Luca, bewildered.

“Second helpings,” said Asher, and then, when Luca was still mystified, “ _More food_ , for fuck’s sake! I haven’t eaten in a dog’s age, you can’t think that was enough?”

It was clear from Luca’s expression that he did. His teeth worried his lip. Then his face brightened; he leapt to his feet.

“Wait here,” he said.

“Like I’ve got any bloody choice—” Asher began, but Luca was already gone. The door slammed shut behind him.

Out of habit, Asher tested the knob. Locked. Just like always.

Luca came bounding in a moment later. He cradled a rag, carefully folded.

“I saved this for Ganymene’s altar,” he said, pulling back the rag to reveal a morsel of bread. “But—well, you can have it.”

Asher looked from the bread to Luca and back. At home scraps like this got fed to the dog.

“Are you serious?”

Luca nodded, clearly mistaking the source of Asher’s incredulity.

“Ganymene will understand. He knows what it’s like to be hungry.”

Asher could have laughed at him. In his old life, he would have. But then hunger nipped his stomach, just hard enough to remind him of what those teeth felt like sinking in. Suddenly the bread didn’t look so bad.

“Thanks,” said Asher gruffly.

Luca ducked his head. Asher almost caught a glimpse of a smile, but as soon as it appeared, it was gone.

Apparently sucking off the overseer had been some kind of test. The next day, Bagoas was back. He had his hair pinned up in an elaborate crown of braids. The whole structure was held together, quite improbably, by two little brass sticks.

“How d’you get all that to stay up?” asked Asher, curious.

Bagoas arched a plucked brow.

“Practice and patience,” he said. “Two qualities you are sorely lacking.”

Asher decided to take offense at that.

“I did what the overseer wanted, didn’t I?” he said sulkily.

“Yes, you did,” said Bagoas, as if he was still surprised. “Whatever better angel changed your mind, I hope it takes up residence.”

Asher thought of Luca’s shadowed eyes, his too-small body, the bruises that never seemed to fade. He wasn’t an angel; he was a ghost.

“You’re not going to let me go home, are you?” he said.

Bagoas’s stern expression softened. Still, he shook his head.

“That’s not within my power. Your contract is for five years.”

 _Five years._ Asher turned away so that Bagoas wouldn’t see him blink away the sting.

“What else are you going to make me do?” he said dully.

“You need to begin your training. But the master wants you first. He likes to sample the new boys while they’re still fresh.”

For a moment, Asher didn’t understand. Then a wave of nausea broke over him.

“I can’t. He’s—I can’t.”

“Asher,” said Bagoas. He sounded so tired. “You don’t have any choice.”

Boq lived at the top of the Harlequin in a jewelbox of gilt and silk. It was the first time Asher had been let out of his cell since he’d been sold; the rich colors made his eyes ache.

“Don’t talk back unless you want to be whipped within an inch of your life,” Bagoas said, dragging Asher by the arm. “Just do as the master says. Whatever he says. Luca will be there, you can look to him for direction.”

 _Luca will be there_. Asher didn’t have time to think about what that meant before Bagoas had opened the velvet-draped door and pushed him inside.

Boq sat on a round satin bed, robe flung open, head tossed back. Luca knelt between his legs. He was naked. His golden head bobbed up and down over Boq’s lap.

Hearing the door, Luca looked up. His mouth was swollen. His expression was distant, dreamlike. Asher couldn’t have said whether Luca recognized him.

“Did I tell you to stop?” said Boq.

Luca flinched. He put his head down in Boq’s lap and went back to sucking.

“Come here,” said Boq, beckoning to Asher with a beringed hand.

In his mind, Asher was running. He was kicking down the door. He was turning the corner onto Cherry Street, and he was home. He was home.

_If you live, you’ll get to see your family again. If you live. If you live…_

Up close, Asher could see the layers of makeup caked into the folds of Boq’s skin. He had small, bright eyes like a pig’s.

“Show him how to please me, little Bird,” said Boq, lounging on his elbows.

Luca sat back on his heels. His skinny fingers were wrapped around Boq’s erection, so dark a red it looked bleeding. He gave Asher instructions in a soft voice that had no feeling at all.

When Asher couldn’t get the cock in far enough, Luca pushed his head down until he gagged.

“Mm, lovely,” Boq murmured.

Asher heard the pulse in his ears. The room swam. It was like the bucket again. It was like being drowned.

He couldn’t stand it anymore and pulled off, gasping.

“No stamina,” Boq clucked. “We’ll have to work on that. Here, little Bird, put him on the bed and get him ready for me.”

Lying on his back with his gaze fixed on the ceiling, it was easier for Asher to pretend that he was dead. That’s what he was doing when Luca breached his asshole with a slick finger.

The shock of it brought Asher back. He kicked instinctively. Luca caught his ankle and held it down.

“Don’t,” he whispered, lips against Asher’s ear. “It’ll be worse if he takes you dry.”

Asher turned away. In his mind’s eye, he conjured the view from the pier. On nice days, you could see clear across the quay. Simon had promised to take him there once they had enough money to buy their own boat.

A shadow fell over him. Boq.

“What a picture you two make,” he crooned, stroking Luca’s cheek. “Light and dark. My beautiful boys.”

 _I’m not yours_ , Asher thought. _I’m not anyone’s._

But Boq closed in on him anyway, his bulk heaving over Asher.

Panic surged. Asher fought; he couldn’t help it. He struggled mindlessly, forgetting everything Simon taught him about grappling a larger opponent.

“Hold him,” Boq grunted.

Luca caught Asher’s wrists and pressed them down. His grip was shockingly strong. Asher couldn’t wriggle out it.

Boq pushed Asher’s thighs open with his knees. He shuffled forward, cock nosing bluntly between Asher’s legs. His asshole was so slick that the head breached him without Boq even having to push.

“Tight,” Boq observed, shifting his weight forward.

Asher turned away, meaning to press his face into the covers. Instead his cheek met the soft of Luca’s arm.

“Push out when he pushes in,” Luca whispered. “Try to time your breaths.”

But Asher couldn’t do anything. His body was all jumbled up, a tangle of alien limbs. Were these his legs? Luca’s arms? Where did Boq end and he begin?

“Let me in, boy,” Boq growled between gritted teeth. “Ah— _there_ —”

Pain, then. Like a rip.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Boq sighed.

Asher realized that Luca wasn’t holding his wrists anymore, but his hands. Asher was digging his nails into Luca’s palms hard enough to break the skin.

Boq pulled back with a pleased groan. It felt like something was being torn out of Asher, something vital. His liver, maybe.

Then Boq shoved back in.

Asher wanted to vomit. He wanted to scream. Instead he buried his face in Luca’s arm.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Luca whispered. “It’ll be over soon, I swear.”

Asher squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see the anguish in Luca’s face.

Boq huffed and sweated. His belly knocked the breath from Asher on every instroke. Rough hairs scraped his skin.

Finally Boq strove forward; a shudder rippled through him. Asher felt warmth spread in him and gagged. He gagged again when Boq pulled out.

“Hardly a show of promise,” Boq sighed. “Still, a little resistance at the beginning makes the yielding so much sweeter.” To Luca, he said, “Ah, but you’ve never resisted, have you, little Bird?”

As Boq spoke, all the expression drained from Luca’s face. It was like watching someone die.

“No, master,” Luca whispered.

Boq chuckled fondly.

“That’s my little slut.”

Asher lay curled up on the floor of the shower, watching soapy rivulets run between the tiles. Luca was rubbing the sponge in soothing circles between his shoulders. The soap had the same medicinal smell as the slick Luca had rinsed from between his legs.

“It gets easier,” said Luca.

“I don’t want it to get easier,” Asher snapped. Then, so violently that he took himself aback, “I want to cut off his cock and shove it down his throat until he chokes.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” said Luca helplessly. “We’re so lucky, Asher, really. Master Boq is the best owner I’ve ever had.”

Asher turned to look at him. But there was no mockery in Luca’s face. He was completely sincere.

The memory came to Asher of hands around his wrists, as impersonal and inescapable as iron bonds.

“You held me down,” he said.

Luca flinched. His hands flew up to yank his hair.

“I’m sorry. I’ll—I’ll give you my dinner. All my dinners. Only please, Asher, you can’t fight when you’re with a man. We can’t fight them, not ever. It’s not allowed.”

Asher shoved himself up. He had the thought, half-wild, that he would smash Luca’s perfect face into the wall until everything that made him beautiful was washed down the drain like dirty water.

Then the pain caught up with him. He cried out, and somehow he could not stop crying.

Luca opened his arms and Asher crumpled into him, sobbing. Like when his brothers put the earth on Simon’s grave. Da had twisted Asher’s ear and told him to be a man, but there was no one to see him now. There was no one but Luca, stroking Asher’s hair and apologizing over and over again.

The trainer’s name was Vassandro. His hair and skin were a deep bronze that set off the flawless white of his teeth. When he smiled, Asher felt weak all over.

“Vassandro is one of the best,” said Bagoas, mercifully oblivious to the heat in Asher’s cheeks. “We are very fortunate that his master agreed to lend him to us for your training.”

“Hooray,” Asher muttered.

Bagoas departed in a flourish of robe, leaving Vassandro alone with Asher and Luca. Vassandro stretched catlike on the bed, one knee tucked under him and his weight on his elbows. He regarded them with an expression that was mild and wicked all at once.

“I suppose we ought to start by showing him how to undress a man,” Vassandro said in a voice like honeyed tea. “But I’ve just become very comfortable; I can’t bring myself to stand. You’ll soon find that I’m a lazy old baggage,” he added, addressing Asher, whose heart flipped. “Just ask Luca. He’s had to perform with me, haven’t you, dear?”

Asher realized that he was glaring at Luca with naked envy. Fortunately Luca didn’t seem to have noticed. He was wearing the vague expression that Asher had initially mistaken for stupidity. Now he knew better. Luca used stupidity as a mask to hide his cleverness. But Asher had no idea why Luca would want to hide from Vassandro. If Asher was clever, he would definitely want Vassandro know.

“Well, this position does offer certain opportunities,” said Vassandro, twinkling at them. “Luca, why don’t you come sit in my lap? Asher, dear, study how he moves. You see how he rises all in one fluid movement? How he keeps his eyes down but his face up for me to admire? He waits for me to signal him closer—like this; memorize the gesture—and then touches my knee, very lightly, with that expression of, mm, _ravishing_ invitation. Of course I signal permission, and he moves, no, _glides_ onto the bed, straddling me, that perfect little peach of an ass rubbing against my, ahem, _straining_ manhood.”

He quirked an eyebrow at Asher, who was in the process of being eaten alive with jealousy.

“Only nobles and high-ranked gentlemen will use hand gestures,” said Luca over his shoulder, all business. “You’ll start in the public room, so you won’t have to worry about knowing them all. But the master uses the important ones, so you should learn them in case he summons you.”

“Does your master uses hand gestures?” Asher asked Vassandro, in order to have something to say.

“What, old Friedrich?” Vassandro snorted. “He has no such pretensions. Unlike Proprietor Boq.”

Asher was delighted. He’d never heard a slave talk about his master that way. Vassandro must be very brave.

“Vassandro,” said Luca, with a note of warning.

Vassandro laughed, tossing his head back to show the burnished column of his throat.

“He’s dreadfully good, isn’t he?” he said to Asher, pinching Luca’s cheek.

Asher didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that Vassandro stayed entirely clothed throughout the session. It turned out that there was a lot to being a pleasure slave that didn’t involve cock at all. Luca showed Asher how to kneel with his spine curved and his face angled so that his lashes shadowed his eyes becomingly, then rise to his feet in a sinuous flicker.

Luca moved as though he had no joints, but Asher seemed to have double the usual number. He fell over, and then, because Vassandro laughed, contrived to keep falling over until Luca despaired of him.

“You’re not even trying,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Oh, dear,” said Vassandro. “If you’ve tested Luca’s saintlike patience, then you’re really in trouble.”

Finally Vassandro departed with the promise to return tomorrow. He threw a wink at Asher as the door closed. Giddy excitement bubbled in Asher’s chest.

He turned to see Luca watching him with his eyes narrowed and his arms crossed.

“What?” said Asher defensively.

“You’re not supposed to be like that with the men.”

“Like what?”

“You flirted, Asher.”

Asher felt indignation rise along with the heat in his cheeks.

“I thought we were supposed to flirt!”

“To _play_ at flirting. We’re not supposed to mean it.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Luca shook his head. His eyes were remote; it was like being looked at the wrong way through a telescope.

“We’re not here for ourselves. We’re here for the clients. Only for them. You don’t exist when they touch you. You’re whatever they want you to be.”

“I exist,” said Asher hotly.

“Not when you’re with a client. You’re just a body. You’re something he’s using to get off with.”

“Stop it.”

But Luca pressed on, ruthless.

“If you acted with a free man the way you acted with Vassandro, he’d have you whipped. Or worse. You think it's bad here? You have no idea. There are places where men pay to take whores apart. At the fuckhouse that used to own me, they'd bring boys down to the cellar and the screams would go on and on—”

“Shut up.”

But it was like Luca hadn’t heard him.

“Or they won't kill you. That's the worst punishment of all. You'll beg for death until you can't even do that anymore. By the time your body gives out, you'll be so far gone that it won't even be a relief. Nobody will notice you've died until the man fucking you complains about the smell.”

“Shut _up!_ ”

The heels of Asher’s palms knocked Luca’s chest, shoving him back. Luca barely staggered before righting himself. He’d been expecting a blow.

“You can hit me, if you like,” he said, with awful, blank politeness.

Asher’s fists twitched at his side. But no; that was what Luca wanted. Then he’d have the upper hand.

Instead Asher hissed, “I don’t want to break your face. It’s all you have.”

He’d wanted that to hurt, to wound, but Luca’s expression didn’t change at all.

“There’s a reason slaves aren’t allowed to want things,” he said. “It’s to protect us. You’ll only get hurt, Asher. You’ll break your own heart.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I bet you don’t even have a heart. There’s nothing inside of you. You’re just a stupid whore.”

Luca went still. The corners of his mouth pulled up crookedly, as if yanked by invisible wires.

“I know,” he said softly.

Asher didn’t have anything to say to that. He turned away from Luca, and, because he couldn’t think what else to do, he kicked the wall. Then he turned back, racking his brain for a really cutting remark.

But Luca had gone.

The next session was a strained affair, the silence broken only by Vassandro’s jesting. Asher was in his lap, like Luca had been yesterday, but he wasn’t enjoying it at all. Vassandro had big hands, much bigger than Asher would have expected, and they ranged all over him, quite impersonally, as if mapping territory.

Asher was supposed to be getting Vassandro hard through his tunic. He could feel the man’s cock under his thigh. Even soft, he was enormous.

“Well, this won’t do,” Vassandro announced after several excruciating minutes of Asher wiggling sullenly in his lap. “You’re heaven to look at, but even the most smitten client would be asking for his money back. What’s the problem, dear? Not your type?”

This was delivered ironically, to let Asher know that Vassandro knew that he was exactly Asher’s type.

“No,” Asher muttered.

He could feel Luca watching him from where he knelt in the corner. Luca was weird about the bed; he would only be on it if he was demonstrating something with Vassandro. Otherwise he gave it a wide berth.

Vassandro caught Asher’s chin and tilted his face up.

“You really are exquisite when you sulk,” he said. “Have you ever had a pretty someone in _your_ lap?”

“’Course,” said Asher, trying not to blush.

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did it make your cock hard?”

Asher shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah. Sometimes. There was a girl…”

“Go on,” said Vassandro, playing his fingers up and down Asher’s spine.

“Mally. She’s a barmaid. Works where my brothers go to drink.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Green.”

“Like mine?”

“No. Yours are more golden. And your lashes—”

“Yes?”

“Your lashes are longer than hers.”

“Ah, there it is,” said Vassandro quietly. “That look. Like banked fire.”

He shifted his weight so that Asher’s ass was cradled in his lap. Asher felt Vassandro’s cock twitch to life beneath him. His stomach twisted with a surge of arousal almost indistinguishable from nausea.

“Touch my hip,” Vassandro instructed. “Just the crease, there. Good boy. Now run your fingertips along the waistband of my trousers. Lightly, lightly. _Good_.”

Vassadro was getting hard. Asher was making him hard.

“Do you feel that?” Vassandro murmured. “That means I’m very pleased with you.”

After Vassandro had gone, Asher caught Luca by the door. Luca wouldn’t meet his eyes. Someone—a client, Asher supposed—had left bruises all over his neck.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” Asher said in a rush. “So if you think I meant it, you shouldn’t.”

Luca looked up at Asher through his lashes. They were even longer than Vassandro’s.

“All right,” he said softly.

“Well,” said Asher, feeling like an idiot. “All right, then.”

Luca hesitated. Then he reached into his tunic pocket and brought out an entire chunk of bread.

“I saved this for you,” said Luca without looking at him.

Asher had been at the Harlequin long enough to know that this was a whole meal. Luca must’ve gone hungry all day just to keep it for him.

“Let’s go halves,” said Asher, as his empty belly contorted in protest.

Luca brightened.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I think my stomach’s shrunk.”

With excellent comic timing, his stomach let loose a growl. Luca laughed—laughed like champagne fizzing over. Asher had never seen Luca laugh before. For a moment, he was luminous.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a description of extreme child abuse, a nonconsensual sex act between minors, and dub-con between a minor and an adult.

Asher tried to stop flirting with Vassandro. He really did. But it was difficult. For one thing, Vassandro wouldn’t stop flirting with him. For another, every session involved more and more of Vassandro’s cock. 

Which was enormous. Asher had expected that, of course; it’s what slaves like Vassandro were for. But it was one thing to feel Vassandro thickening under him and another to see him fully hard, his erection jutting from his trousers like an accusation.

Luca, of course, had absolutely no problem taking Vassandro all the way to the back of his throat. Asher was beginning to suspect that Luca wasn’t made of the stuff that normal people were. 

“What a splendid talent,” Vassandro sighed, flexing his hips up lazily to fuck Luca’s mouth. “I could stay like this all day.”

Asher, on the other hand, gagged the moment the cockhead hit his palate. He pulled off, coughing, and scrubbed his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Well, that’s hardly flattering,” Vassandro sniffed. “I might be a hair larger than average, but there’s no cause for theatrics.”

“Maybe I’m allergic,” said Asher hopefully.

“You might as well declare yourself allergic to food,” said Vassandro, rolling his eyes. “Your master certainly isn’t going to waste money feeding a boy who can’t suck cock.”

Resentment flared in Asher’s chest. He didn’t  _ want  _ to be good at this. 

“Let’s try a different position,” said Luca. “Asher, can you lie on your back with your head over the edge? Like this, I’ll show you.”

Luca draped himself on the bed, hair spilling down to brush the floor. The whole length of Vassandro’s cock disappeared into his mouth like a magic trick.

“Glorious,” Vassandro groaned, pulling back out. “All right, Asher, your turn.” Then, when he didn’t move, “Darling, don’t make me nag. It’s hardly an aphrodisiac.”

“Asher,” said Luca softly. 

He held out his hand. After a long moment, Asher took it and let himself be pulled onto the bed.

Because Asher would not stop complaining about his throat—which he was sure had been split open, or at least permanently stretched out of shape—Luca somehow managed to conjure up a cup of steaming water. 

“Drink it  _ slowly _ ,” he admonished, “or you’ll burn your tongue.”

Asher rolled his eyes, but obeyed. The heat was marvelously soothing. Funny to think that water could feel like such a luxury.

As Asher drank, Luca flitted around putting the room to rights. Asher tried to imagine Luca in a real room in a real house, wearing clothes like a normal boy. But there weren’t any barbarians on Cherry Street.

“Did you have a trainer?” Asher asked idly, warming his hands on the cup.

“Yes, of course.”

“Was he like Vassandro?”

A flicker of something unreadable passed over Luca’s face.

“No. He—no.” 

This was said in a tone that discouraged further questions, but Asher was curious now.

“What was your training like?”

“Different from yours.”

“Why?”

“Because I was at a training house for three years. And because—well, because they can do things to life slaves that they can’t do to debt slaves.”

“Oh,” said Asher. He hadn’t thought of that. 

A lull followed. Asher finished his water and lay back, kicking his legs up on the wall. Luca emanated silent disapproval. He hated it when Asher stayed on the bed after Vassandro left. 

“What was your first time like?” Asher asked, more to have something to say than because he was keenly interested.

“Horrible.”

Something in Luca’s voice made Asher look up. Luca had his fingers tangled in his hair and shoulder hitched up as if to ward off a blow.

“How old were you?” Asher asked, suspicion coiling in his gut.

“Seven.”

“ _ Fuck _ .”

Luca flinched. He seemed unaware that he was plaiting his hair into tight little braids.

“The Commissioner was inspecting the troops in Ost. He saw me, and he wanted me, so he took me.”

“He just  _ took _ you?”

“He said that I was a souvenir,” said Luca, his voice wrenchingly small.

“And he fucked you right away?” said Asher, fuming. “He didn’t wait or anything?”

Wait until Luca was the proper age, he meant. But Luca shook his head.

“He did it as soon as he got me in the carriage. I was so frightened, and he didn’t use enough lube or prepare me at all, really—later he said he’d meant to, but I made him lose control. So that was my fault. But it hurt so much I thought I would die, and I kept passing out, and that made him angry…” 

Luca broke off. He was wrapping the braid around his wrist like a tourniquet. The tips of his fingers were going white.

“There was so much blood by the time he finished that there was some on the windows, even,” he said softly. “And he had to punish me after because I wouldn’t stop crying. Then he told me that I wouldn’t be fed until I learned how to please him.”

Asher wanted to kill a lot of people—Morse, Boq, the judge who’d sent Simon to the gallows. But he’d been selfish before. He’d never wanted to kill just for someone else. Now, watching Luca wind the braid around and around as nightmares flickered behind his eyes, he would have given anything to murder the man who’d hurt him.

“I hope Orkus brings rats to his dreams,” he said fiercely. “I hope they eat him cock-first.”

Luca managed a shaky laugh.

“The second time wasn’t so bad. He let me use his mouth on him, and I’d done that before, so I knew a little better how to make it good. Enough to earn food, anyway.”

“You’d done it with your mouth?”

“Soldiers,” said Luca, as though that explained everything.

Asher couldn’t sit anymore. He shoved himself to his feet and started to pace.

“You know, I wasn’t really a virgin when I came here,” he said abruptly. “I mean, I’d never been fucked, but I’d done everything else.”

“What’s it like?” Luca asked, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his chin on them. 

“Girls are really soft inside. And boys are tight like a hand and hot like a mouth, only both at the same time. It’s nice with girls, because you don’t need slick. And they’ve got tits. But boys have what you’ve got, so they know what feels good.”

Asher spun around and kicked the bedframe.

“I liked it, you know,” he said, swallowing back a shameful throb of tears. “I mean, I hadn’t done it much, I was still figuring out who I wanted and how I wanted them, but—but I  _ liked  _ it.”

He kicked the bed again, hard enough to make it rattle against the wall.

“Now I don’t think I’ll ever like it again.”

Luca touched his ankle, shadow-light.

“You will, I promise. Five years is nothing. You’ll be free again before you know it. You’ll forget you were ever even here.”

“Well, I won’t forget you,” Asher said.

The corner of Luca’s mouth twitched up. He looked away.

“All right,” he said. 

Asher could tell that Luca didn’t believe him. If Asher was being honest, he wasn’t sure if he believed himself. Once he left the Harlequin, he planned to shut the door behind him so tight that nothing could slip out. Not even someone as small as Luca.

Asher didn’t want to look that thought too closely. He was fairly sure that it made him a bad person. Instead he sat cross-legged beside Luca and nudged him with a dusty foot.

“Have you ever liked it?” Asher asked. “Sex, I mean.”

Luca stared at him blankly. Then his eyes went wide. He shook his head, hard.

“No.  _ No.  _ Not ever. Not the way you mean. Slaves aren’t supposed to. It’s not allowed.” 

Luca hesitated. Then, so softly Asher almost couldn’t hear, he said, “Once there was a boy—” before going bright red and covering his mouth.

“Go on,” said Asher, intrigued.

But Luca refused to say anything else.

To Asher’s horror, it was the overseer who arrived the next day instead of Vassandro.

“Happy to see me?” he sneered. “Your boyfriend couldn’t make it. Afraid you’ll have to make do.”

Asher threw Luca a look of appeal, but Luca was wearing his blankest expression. Of course; he always shut down around free men.

“Luca can show you,” said the overseer, settling on the bed. “He knows what I like. Don’t you, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” said Luca. 

The overseer liked to shove his thick tongue down Luca’s throat while mauling him with both hands. He yanked off Luca’s waistcloth and ran his big scarred palms over the swell of his ass. 

“You been fucked today?” he asked, as if inquiring about the weather.

Luca nodded. The overseer dug a thumb into his crack. It sank into him without resistance.

Asher looked away. He didn’t want to see this.

“Asher,” said Luca softly. He was holding out his hand.

Asher crossed his arms and shook his head. No fucking way.

“I could fetch the bucket if you like,” said the overseer with a nasty grin. “Been missing it, have you?”

Asher was about to tell the overseer exactly where he could shove his stupid bucket, but Luca spoke first. 

“Please, sir, he’ll do whatever you want, only—only do it to me first, so I can show him how.” 

Before the overseer could reply, Luca brought the man’s free hand to his mouth and sucked his fingers inside. The overseer made a noise of pleasure. He pushed deeper, knuckles brushing Luca’s lip.

“You’re just trying to make me come before I can fuck him,” he muttered.

Asher heard a wet sound; the overseer groaned. Luca pulled his head back so that the overseer’s fingers slipped out of his mouth.

“I’ve missed you, sir,” he murmured, sliding his hand under into overseer’s breeches. “Please, sir, let me suck your cock. I think about it all the time.”

Asher wanted to sink into the wall. He wanted to shrink until he disappeared. But Luca was on his knees rubbing his mouth against the bulge in the overseer’s breeches, and there was no escape. Asher couldn’t even close his eyes. Not when Luca was doing this so that the overseer would leave Asher alone.

But the distraction didn’t last.

“Stop,” the overseer groaned, dragging Luca back by the hair. “Ah,  _ fuck.  _ The things I do for this bloody job. Right. You—” He jerked his chin at Asher. “Get over here.”

Asher set his jaw. He wouldn’t. He’d rather die with his head in a bucket.

“Asher, please,” said Luca, a note of panic in his voice. “Please, just—just put your hand on him. Just your hand, that’s all.” 

The overseer rolled his eyes and muttered something about mollycoddlers. Asher could see the bite mark on his palm, fading now into a scar. The overseer hadn’t forgiven Asher for that. If Asher gave him an excuse, he would take it gladly. 

At least Asher had some experience with handjobs. This was most of what he’d done with other boys and with Vassandro. Besides, he’d certainly wanked himself enough to be an expert.

But it was different with someone he hated. The overseer’s cock felt like an eel, all slimy from Luca sucking him. The smell made Asher’s throat close up.

“Go on, then,” said the overseer, settling back on his elbows. “Jerk it. Ah,  _ fuck,  _ not that hard! Melita’s tits, are you trying to pull my cock off?”

_ Yes,  _ Asher thought vengefully.

“Don’t be so rough with the head,” said Luca, putting his hand over Asher’s. “It’s sensitive. Squeeze here, at the base. Then twist up like this. Do you like that, sir?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” the overseer hissed, pumping his hips up. “Make him lick it.”

Asher tried to pull away, but Luca clamped down on his wrist.

“Do it, Asher,” he said in a low voice.

Asher glared at him, betrayed. But he might as well have directed his anger at a stone. 

The piss slit was beaded with pearly fluid. Asher tried to avoid it, lapping around the ridge instead, but the overseer shoved him down.

“Come on,” he muttered, forcing his cockhead between Asher’s lips. “Take it all, you piece of shit.”

Asher didn’t know whether he bit on purpose or by reflex. He felt his teeth sink into skin—and then, in the next moment, a burst of pain above his ear. He fell back, clutching his head, as the overseer surged to his feet.

“He bit me! That little fucker!”

A bubble of mad laughter rose in Asher’s throat.  _ Told you I would _ , he thought.

Luca leapt up, grabbing the overseer’s arm.

“It was an accident,” he said desperately. “He didn’t mean to, I swear, I  _ swear  _ he didn’t mean to. Please, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll do anything you want.” Then, voice dropping, “You know how good I can make you feel. Please, sir, let your slave beg for it.”

The overseer had his belt raised over Asher; as Luca spoke, it went slack in his hand. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Even with his vision swimming, Asher could see the hunger in the man’s eyes.

“Beg for it, will you?” he said, grabbing Luca’s waist and yanking him closer. “Go on, then.”

Luca begged. He begged for things that Asher hadn’t even known existed. Asher tried to find a place in his mind that sound couldn’t penetrate, but he couldn’t block out Luca’s breathless, eager voice.

The overseer wrapped a hand around Luca’s neck and shoved him down onto the bed.

“Get your ass up and show me where you want it,” he growled. “ _ Fuck  _ yes. My little slut.”

_ My little slut.  _ Boq had called Luca that, too. And he looked like a slut, didn’t he? On his knees with his back arched, reaching back to pull himself open. He looked as brainless as Asher had always been told barbarians were.

No.  _ No.  _ Luca wasn’t a slut. He wasn’t brainless. He was protecting Asher. He was Asher’s friend.

Asher didn’t let himself think. He scrambled onto the bed, knocking Luca aside with his elbow.

“Don’t,” he said to the overseer. “Don’t do it to him. You’re supposed to be doing it to me, so—so just fucking do it already.”

The overseer had a knee on the bed and his hand on his cock. He looked at Asher with dumb surprise.

Asher took a deep breath to brace himself. Then he turned over onto his fours. He couldn’t bring himself to put his head down and present his ass like Luca had. It felt too much like defeat.

“Ah, that’s a picture,” said the overseer, running a finger down Asher’s crack. When he snapped his hips forward, hissing, the overseer laughed. “Skittish, eh? Well, we’ll fix that.”

Asher felt the overseer move onto the bed. He grit his teeth to keep from screaming.

“Sir, wait,” said Luca, pleading, “wait, he’s not ready—”

“Get him ready, then,” said the overseer, with a note of something nasty in his voice. “Give me a nice little show while I get my cock slicked up.”

Asher heard a sharp indrawn breath.

“Sir—”

“Unless you want me to take him like this.” 

Luca made a small noise. Strange; it almost sounded like a sob. But Luca never cried.

Then something warm and wet touched the rim of Asher’s asshole.

Before he could put together what was happening, a shock of awful pleasure jolted up his spine. He tried to scramble away, but the overseer grabbed his hair and shoved him face-down on the bed. The heel of his palm ground into Asher’s jaw, pinning him in place.

“None of that,” the overseer scolded. “You said you wanted it. Now you’re getting it. Luca, either you lick him open or I’ll fuck him dry and fist him after. Your choice.”

Asher knew what Luca would choose. He squeezed his eyes shut until pinpricks of light exploded on the inside of his lids. 

_ I’m steel,  _ he told himself.  _ I’m steel, I’m stone, I feel nothing. _

But he couldn’t help the whimper that escaped when Luca did the thing with his tongue again. He didn’t want this. It was disgusting. Luca was disgusting for doing it and Asher was disgusting for letting it happen. He wished urgently to be dead.

He didn’t die. Luca’s tongue was inside him and the overseer was slicking up his cock to fuck him and Asher was horribly, relentlessly alive.

After a miserable eternity, the overseer yanked Luca away. Before Asher’s hole could close, the overseer had shoved two oiled fingers inside. Asher’s half-hard cock twitched against his belly. He muffled a sob into his arm.

“You dirty little animal,” said the overseer, chuckling. “Your prick doesn’t do that, does it, boy?”

Out of the watery corner of his eye, Asher saw Luca go white with fear.

“Please, sir,  _ please _ don’t punish him, he can’t help it, he hasn’t been trained not to—”

But the overseer only laughed.

“You think I care if he gets off? Hell, he can come all he wants, so long as he doesn’t expect me to help.”

To make his point, the overseer twisted his fingers savagely before pulling them out. Asher felt him line up his cock.

If Asher came, he would kill himself. He knew that with the same dull certainty as he knew someday he would kill the man who’d fucked him that first night.

“’Least your ass is still tight,” the overseer grunted. “Almost makes me want to treat you nice.”

He eased his way forward—slowly, gently, like a lover. Asher’s lungs were waterlogged. The sheet under his face was soaked. He was drowning again, only this time he hadn’t said  _ No.  _

“Stop crying,” the overseer snapped.

_ I’m not crying _ , Asher wanted to say—but all that came out was a keening noise, like a trapped animal.

“Fuck it, he’s going to make me lose my hard-on,” the overseer ground out between clenched teeth. “You still want this cock, boy?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” said Luca, frantic. “Yes, I want it, I need it, please, please fuck me instead, sir,  _ please _ —”

Something hit the bed next to Asher. Luca, shoved down by the overseer’s big hand. He’d bitten his lip so deeply it was bleeding. He looked at Asher with eyes like open wounds.

The overseer dragged himself back, groaning. Asher felt as though a lead weight was being pulled from his guts. Cool air stung his insides as his hole tried to twitch itself closed. 

He wasn’t hard anymore. He didn’t ever want to be hard again.

The overseer shuffled to kneel behind Luca. He hauled his hips up with one hand and pushed down on the small of his back with the other.

“There it is,” the overseer murmured. “Pretty little hole, nice and ready for me. Pretty little whore. You been gagging for it, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Luca whispered, his eyes not leaving Asher’s.

Somehow their hands had come to be tangled together. As the overseer pushed into Luca, Asher squeezed. Luca squeezed back.

The overseer fucked Luca like he was trying to punish him. The whole time, he kept up a crooning stream of insults.

“Look at you, taking it so good. This is all you’re good for, isn’t it? Taking a fat cock up your ass like a bitch. My bitch. I take care of you, don’t I, love? I take care of my beautiful boy.”

It was easier for Asher not to listen. To set himself adrift in the dark water of Luca’s eyes. As the room faded around them, Asher could almost convince himself that they were the only two people in the world.

Asher turned the shower handle until lukewarm water needled down on him. Wordlessly, Luca passed him the soap. Then he took an enema bulb from the shelf and filled it with washwater. 

Asher looked away. He didn’t need to see Luca wash the overseer’s semen out of his ass. Bad enough having to watch the overseer come in the first place.

It was Luca who broke the silence.

“Why did you do that?”

Asher turned, but Luca had his back to him. His shoulders were stiff, as if he were in pain.

“What d’you mean?”

Luca wrang the water out of his hair with more force than necessary.

“He was going to fuck me, but then you told him to do it to you instead,” he said. “You shouldn’t try to protect me. I’m not worth it.”

“You protect me all the time.”

“That’s different,” said Luca. “You’re different. After the debt’s paid, they’ll let you go home.”

But Luca was never going home, Asher realized. There wasn’t an end for him. He would be here spreading for men like the overseer until Boq sold him—sold him somewhere worse, maybe. Somewhere the beds had chains and the floors drained into the quay.

_ …they won't kill you. That's the worst punishment of all. It goes on and on… _

“We could run,” Asher said. 

Luca shivered like a shadow had fallen over him.

“Stop it.”

“No, come on, just think about it. All we’d need are the keys. Boq must have them, right, or the overseer? You could lift them easy, I could teach you how—”

“ _ Stop it! _ ” 

Asher had never heard Luca raise his voice before. It echoed off the tiles.

“If you say it’s not allowed,” said Asher, “I will punch you in the mouth.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“Do you ever do anything without being told?”

“I’ve seen what happens when slaves try to escape,” said Luca, twisting his hair hard enough to wrench strands loose. “It’s not worth it.”

“So we won’t get caught.”

“Slaves always get caught.”

“You don’t know my Da. He’s got connections all over Solas. In Oued, even. If he could get us on a ship—”

But Luca pressed his hands over his ears and turned back to the wall. Asher gave up.

Asher half-expected the overseer to return the next day. He was prepared for it. This time he was really was going to bite the fucker’s cock off. 

But the door opened and Vassandro bounded in, filling the room like sunlight.

“Where’s Luca?” asked Asher, trying to ignore the flip-flop of his stomach.

“Dancing,” said Vassandro with a knee-weakening smile. “He’s getting quite famous, your little barbarian.”

“He’s not my barbarian.”

“Oh, darling, I’ve seen dogs less devoted.”

“He’s not a dog, either,” said Asher, scowling. “And it isn’t like that between us.”

“Like what?”

“Like what you’re saying.” Asher shook his head, furious with himself for blushing. “You get me twisted up on purpose.”

The bed dipped as Vassandro knelt beside him. He moved like Luca—lithe, serpentine, the lines of his body arranged in invitation.

“I can’t resist,” Vassandro purred. “You are very pretty when you pout.”

Asher seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

“You’re flirting with me,” he managed to wheeze.

“I’d be a liar to deny it,” Vassandro murmured, brushing his lips against Asher’s throat.

“Well, you shouldn’t,” said Asher weakly. “It’s—it’s not allowed.”

“Now you sound like Luca,” said Vassandro, amused. “Why shouldn’t slaves please ourselves when our masters are away? The cat doesn’t need know what the mice get up to.”

_ I’m not a mouse,  _ Asher thought. But Vassandro treated him like one, didn’t he? Pouncing on him, teasing him, batting him from paw to paw just for the pleasure of watching him squirm. 

“Do you really like me, or are you just pretending?”

Aloud, the question sounded more petulant than Asher had intended. But Vassandro didn’t laugh. He took Asher’s hand and flicked the tip of his tongue up the soft valley of Asher’s wrist.

Asher’s breath caught. Could Vassandro feel how his pulse raced?

Vassandro brought Asher’s hand down, molding it around the thick line of his erection. An answering jolt of heat rushed to Asher’s cock and throbbed there.

“Does it feel like I’m pretending?”

Asher shook his head to clear it.

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“You’re right,” said Vassandro. “How fortunate that I have other ways of convincing you.”

He rolled Asher onto his back and pulled down his waistcloth. Asher’s cock sprung free, already half-hard. Vassandro made a pleased noise. He cupped the back of Asher’s neck and pulled him into a kiss.

They’d kissed before, with Vassandro playing client and Luca giving instructions.  _ When a man kisses you, it’s only because he wants to know what you’ll feel like around his cock. Don’t thrust your tongue like that. He’s taking your mouth; you’re not taking his.  _

But this was nothing like those chaperoned exchanges. Asher pulled Vassandro down on him while pushing into his mouth. He bucked his hips up, seeking friction, and hissed when his cock rubbed against the iron outline of Vassandro’s.

“With that dirty mouth of yours, I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re such a filthy kisser,” Vassandro murmured. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around the straining heat between Asher’s legs. “Mm. You have a gorgeous cock. I’ll wager no one has sucked it since you were sold, have they?” 

Asher was having trouble forming coherent thoughts. He shook his head.

“What a neglect.”

Vassandro’s tongue darted into Asher’s ear. An electric pulse ran down his spine. His cock twitched in Vassandro’s hand, fluid beading at the tip.

Vassandro moved down. He nipped Asher’s bottom lip and peaked nipples before laying a trail of open-mouthed kisses down his stomach. Asher tilted his hips up, pleading.

“Vassandro…”

“Gerald, actually.”

“Ger—what—”

Then Vassandro swallowed his cock to the root, and Asher utterly lost the ability to speak.

Asher knew he wasn’t any good at giving head, but it wasn’t until Vassandro that he understood why. Vassandro sucked cock like he was starving for it. He took Asher down until his eyes steamed and his throat contracted. He moaned in pleasure, sending white-hot vibrations down Asher’s cock. Asher thrust up, chasing that tight place just beyond Vassandro’s palate.

To his distress, Vassandro pulled back—slowly, with obvious reluctance, sucking the precum from his slit before kissing it.

“Gods, you’re a feast,” said Vassandro roughly. “Much as I’d love to taste you, I have other plans for us today. Let’s see what this feels like inside me, hm?”

Asher barely had time to process that before Vassandro was straddling him. He rubbed their cocks together, slicking himself with the spit that coated Asher’s length. With the other hand, he reached into the bedside table for the vial of slick.

“Let me,” said Asher. His voice was so ragged with lust that he almost didn’t recognize it. 

Vassandro flicked the cap open and poured slick on Asher’s fingers. Asher groped Vassandro’s ass, squeezing the muscled slopes before questing into the cleft between. 

Vassandro’s hole was at once soft and unyielding. Asher had to work to wriggle a fingertip inside.

“It’s been awhile since anyone’s done this but me,” said Vassandro apologetically. 

He reached back, grasping Asher’s wrist and pushing back on him. They both hissed as he sank in to the knuckle.

“ _ Fuck,  _ that’s—don’t stop, I want it, give me another—”

Asher had to bite his tongue so that he wouldn’t come just from hearing the breathless note in Vassandro’s voice. Thrusting shallowly, he worked a second finger in beside the first. 

Vassandro was blazing hot inside. Asher had the dizzy thought that he could feel Vassandro’s heart throbbing in time to his own.

“Fuck me,” Vassandro groaned.

Asher didn’t need to be told twice. He moved on instinct, throwing Vassandro down on his back and pinning his knees to his shoulders. Vassandro looked up at him with dark copper hair rayed around his luststruck face, his eyes glazed with astonishment and desire. 

Asher had never felt more powerful than he did in this moment. 

Then Vassandro locked his legs around Asher’s waist, pulling him forward until their bodies flush together, and Asher didn’t think about anything for quite some time.

“I can’t believe you let me do that.”

Asher was lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling as though poleaxed. 

Beside him, Vassandro stretched, arching his back like a cat. He looked very pleased with himself.

“It is perhaps the cruelest irony of my life that the sex I prefer is the sort I almost never get to have,” he said.

Asher turned to look at him. His sleek body glistened with a fine sheen of sweat. Chestnut hair spilled over his broad shoulders, snagged into knots from the friction of his head on the pillow. Asher could never have imagined Vassandro so rumpled. It made him ache just below his breastbone.

Idly, Asher pulled Vassandro’s thighs apart. Below the velvet purse of his balls, a smear of white trickled from his hole.

_ I did that,  _ thought Asher, and felt a giddy surge of triumph.

“Is your name really Gerald?” he asked.

Vassandro had closed his eyes; now he slit them open to give Asher a satirical look.

“You can’t think my mother called me Vassandro.”

“Did your master change it?”

“Mm. He wanted something dashing.”

“You’re dashing anyway,” said Asher. “Doesn’t matter what your name is.”

“Oh, darling,” said Vassandro, “you’re too young to be breaking hearts.”

“I would never break your heart,” said Asher. “Not in a million years. Vassandro—Gerald—I love—”

“Hush,” said Vassandro, laying a warning finger to Asher’s lips. “Whatever silly thing you were about to say, swallow it. This is only a passing fancy. A moment, nothing more.”

Asher shook his head, frustrated. Vassandro thought he was just a child.

“Run away with me.”

Asher had been worried that Vassandro would react like Luca. But he only laughed.

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” he said, tweaking Asher’s ear. Then, when Asher began to protest, Vassandro pressed a finger back to his lips and said firmly, “No, dear. That’s quite enough.”

Asher threw his head back on the pillow, scowling.

“It can’t be so terrible, what they do to runaways,” he muttered.

Vassandro propped himself up on an elbow and pushed Asher’s curls back from his forehead. For the first time, Asher noticed the crosshatch of faded scars on his wrists. 

“I envy you,” said Vassandro quietly. “You must’ve had an easy life, to be so innocent.”

Asher was about to protest. Then he thought of Luca, taken away from his family when he was only a child and brutalized until he thought rape was mercy. Vassandro’s life probably hadn’t been much better.

Vassandro stretched again. Then he rolled onto his knees in one athletic movement. The muscles of his stomach flexed as he gathered his disheveled hair into a knot.

“I do need to fuck you before I leave today,” he said, businesslike. “Proprietor Boq’s orders.”

He might as well have cracked a hand across Asher’s cheek. Asher gaped at him, betrayed.

“Oh, dearest, don’t give me those eyes,” Vassandro sighed. “You know why I’m here.”

The slick was on the bed beside them, leaking into the sheets. Asher grabbed the vial and threw it at Vassandro. It hit his chest and dropped into his lap.

“Get on with it, then,” Asher said, turning to the wall.

Vassandro cupped Asher’s face, forcing him to turn back. 

“Now, now. Don’t martyr yourself on my account.” Then, without the singsong note of teasing: “Promise you won’t hate me? My heart really will break.”

His beautiful eyes were soft with apology. Asher felt the ice in his chest melt a little.

“Promise.”

But it was a difficult promise to keep when Vassandro was forcing his cock into Asher’s body with the ruthless insistence of a machine. Asher sank his teeth into the meat of his forearm and tried to remember what Luca had told him when they were with Boq.  _ Push out when he pushes in. Try to time your breaths. _

“It’ll go easier if you arch your back,” said Vassandro apologetically.

Asher wanted to hit him directly in the face. Instead he forced himself to lift his hips. He could feel the tip of Vassandro’s cock slide home like the point of a weapon. 

Asher squeezed his eyes shut and bit down on his arm until he tasted copper.

Fortunately Vassandro didn’t last long. Whether he was trying to be merciful or simply spent from his first orgasm, Asher didn’t know. He felt Vassandro’s hips stutter and warmth spread inside of him. The thought came of a dog pissing on a fencepost to claim it. Asher had to swallow back bile.

“Well, the main course wasn’t nearly as pleasant as the appertif,” Vassandro sighed, disengaging himself before dropping back down next to Asher. “Your gift is clearly to give, not to recieve. What a pair we make, eh? If only our masters would let us switch places.”

“D’you really think I could do what you do?” asked Asher, suddenly interested.

“It was a joke, Asher,” said Vassandro. “You wouldn’t want my role, believe me.”

“I might,” said Asher, sitting up. “I mean, I’m not as big as you are, but I’m only fifteen. I’ll grow. And I like boys and girls both. I could fuck anyone.”

“Oh really?” said Vassandro. “Could you fuck a crying child?”

The words hit Asher like a physical blow. He stared at Vassandro, waiting for him to roll his eyes, to laugh, to admit that he’d made a terrible joke. 

But Vassandro was looking up at the ceiling with fingers laced behind his head. His face was as empty as Luca’s. 

“You haven’t done that,” said Asher. His voice was very small.

“That and worse,” said Vassandro. He tucked a stray curl behind Asher’s ear. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, dear. There are things I wish I didn’t know about myself. But I suppose you’ll find that out soon enough.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Tomorrow Luca and I will perform a full session for you. I’ll play the role of the client, he the whore. You’re to watch very carefully and mimic what he does afterwards, when you and I put on a show for our masters.”

“No,” said Asher, pulling away. “No. I can’t.”

“Oh, my darling boy,” said Vassandro quietly. “Don’t you know by now that you haven’t any choice?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains both dub- and non-con between minors and an adult, and a mention of off-screen mutilation (not of a major character).

Asher didn’t actually want to kill Luca. Luca was his friend, or at least as close to a friend as he had in this horrible place. Besides, it wasn’t like Luca _wanted_ Vassandro to fuck him. Luca hated sex.

But that was hard to remember when Luca was looking up at Vassandro through his lashes, half-naked body canted towards him in wanton invitation.

“Welcome to the Harlequin, sir,” said Luca. “How may your slave serve your pleasure?”

Vassandro was wearing a free man’s clothes and looking very smug about it. He swaggered into the room with his nose up and his chest puffed out.

“Well, you’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” he said, in a Gracegarden drawl that sounded like it’d been passed through a laundry mangle. “Why don’t you take my nice boots and my very smart coat while I think of all the nasty things I’m going to do to you.”

Luca unlaced Vassandro’s boots, then rose with a chime of bangles. He ran his fingers down Vassandro’s chest, unbuttoning his waistcoat and sliding inside his shirt to trace the skin that only days ago, Asher had kissed.

Vassandro ran his hand through Luca’s hair, admiring how the waves rippled gold. Luca tilted his face up, full lips wet and parted. In the soft light, his eyes looked otherwordly.

He was beautiful. Asher wanted to kill him.

“What sort of services do you provide here?” asked Vassandro.

Luca smiled. “Any service you desire, sir.”

Vassandro leaned down and took Luca’s mouth in a deep, claiming kiss. He ran his hands down Luca’s back and tugged away his waistcloth. Vassandro’s palms were so big that they covered Luca’s ass completely. He squeezed hard enough to leave red marks on the pale skin.

“Lovely creature,” Vassandro murmured. “What else can that sweet mouth do?”

Luca slipped to his knees.

Asher tried not to watch the next part. He had to keep his eyes on them; Bagoas was observing from the corner, and Asher knew that he’d be in trouble if he tried to look away. But he let the room slide out of focus until the two figures blurred into anonymity.

It could’ve been anyone sucking the man’s cock. It could’ve been anyone pushing the boy down on the bed.

But it wasn’t anyone. It was Luca and Vassandro, and they were fucking now, their perfect bodies moving together like lovers. Luca tossed his head, flexing his hips to meet Vassandro’s thrusts. He was making breathless, needy noises, like Vassandro had made with Asher. They sounded horribly real.

“My angel,” Vassandro crooned, stroking his face. “My treasured one.”

A spear of ice slid between Asher’s ribs and lodged in his heart.

Then, without warning, Vassandro cracked his palm across Luca’s cheek.

It was Asher who cried out, even though Luca was the one whose face snapped sideways. His rapturous expression twisted into one of naked fear.

“Asher,” said Bagoas, a note of warning in his voice.

Asher realized that he was on his feet, fists balled at his sides. He hesitated—just long enough for Luca to jerk his chin impatiently. In the next moment his features contorted again, but Asher knew now that Luca’s fear was no more real than his lust had been.

Still, Asher nearly leapt up again when Vassandro pinned Luca’s knees to his shoulders and drove into him like he was trying to nail him through the bed. The room filled with the sound of his body smacking against Luca’s.

“Please, sir,” Luca sobbed. “Please, don’t, you’re h-hurting me, s-stop, _please_ —”

If Asher hadn’t been sure that Luca was faking, he was now. Luca would never say it hurt. He would never ask a man to stop.

“I want you to hurt,” Vassandro growled. “Suffer for me, whore.”

He yanked his cock out of Luca and threw him onto his knees. Luca cried out when Vassandro’s cock pierced him again.

“It’s too big,” Luca whimpered. “Please, sir, _please_ take it out.”

“You love it,” Vassandro hissed through his teeth. “Take it all, you worthless cunt.”

Luca sobbed, soft and hopeless.

 _Pretending,_ Asher reminded himself. Luca was only pretending. They both were.

And Asher could see now how choreographed the violence was. Vassandro put his back into each thrust to give the look of brutality; the slap of skin on skin did the rest. Luca threw himself forward on every instroke, whimpering pitifully and radiating terror, but Asher had seen him take worse under the overseer and not make a sound.

They’d done this before. Of course; Vassandro had told him as much. Asher was watching professionals put on a show. The same show Asher would be expected to put on himself.

Abruptly, Vassandro’s manner changed. He became tender again, dropping kisses down Luca’s spine. Luca flexed back against him, mewling.

Something unspoken had passed between them. When Vassandro moved, Luca moved with him. They rolled so that Vassandro was on his back with Luca straddling him. Vassandro lay back in the pillows with his head on his arms, as if at any moment he might drift into a nap.

Luca leaned forward, tossing his hair over his shoulder. He arched his back and fucked himself up and down on Vassandro’s cock with languid deliberation. Asher remembered what Vassandro had said about Luca being a dancer. Even now, his movements were fluid, graceful, as though synchronized to music that only he could hear.

Asher wondered if Luca ever wished he could dance without getting fucked after. He wondered if Luca wished for anything. Maybe Luca was like a mirror: he reflected whatever men wanted to see. That would explain the eerie blankness that came over him sometimes. When there was no one to look at him, he was only an empty glass.

Maybe whatever Asher thought he saw in Luca was just his own loneliness reflected back at him. Maybe they’d never really been friends.

Once again, Vassandro changed without warning. He flipped Luca onto his knees and shoved his head down.

“Take it,” Vassandro muttered, driving his cock home. “Take it all.”

Luca went limp, a puppet with its strings cut. Vassandro thrust into him, efficient, mechanical. As unfeeling as a well pump.

 _Let it be over, let it be over,_ Asher chanted in his mind.

As if hearing him, Vassandro spend up. His hips stuttered; he made a noise. He pulled his cock out of Luca, tugged it once, and spurted across the brand on the small of his back.

With a sick feeling, Asher realized that this was why Luca had been branded there. To give men something to look at when they fucked him. To give them something to aim for when they were done.

Once Vassandro had spent himself, Bagoas stepped forward with a towel. Vassandro caught it one-handed and wiped the cooling semen from Luca’s skin. Luca pushed back against him.

“Thank you for using me, sir,” Luca purred. “May I clean you?”

“No thank you, dearest,” said Vassandro, laying a chaste kiss on his cheek. “We can slip out of role now, I think. You’ve been lovely as always.”

Luca’s seductive expression melted away. He smiled as Vassandro absently, the way people did in dreams.

“Thank you both; that was very instructive,” said Bagoas. “Asher, you’re fortunate indeed to have such expert teachers. Vassandro demonstrated a range of clients, and Luca showed the appropriate response to each one.”

“When we perform, I’ll do to you what I did to Luca,” said Vassandro, businesslike. “You’ll know now how our masters will expect you to react.”

Asher searched Vassandro for some sign of—what? Tenderness? Regret? It didn’t matter. His handsome face was impassive. There was no sign that he knew Asher at all.

Vassandro’s owner was even older than Asher had guessed. His skin clung loosely, like the rind of an orange that had rolled into a pantry corner and been forgotten. No wonder he needed Vassandro. His own cock probably hadn’t worked since King Edmund was on the throne.

Friedrich and Boq greeted each other like old friends, clasping hands and clapping shoulders.

“Friedrich! How splendid to see you looking so well.”

“Gregori! It’s been too long.”

Friedrich turned to Asher, who was toeing at the carpet.

“So this is the boy Vassandro has been training,” he said, looking Asher up and down as if he were a cut of meat in a butcher’s window. “I can see why you’ve been so patient with him, Gregori. He’s a rare flower indeed. And not even yet in full bloom.”

“Were he only a little less beautiful, I would’ve sold him ten times over by now,” Boq sighed. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble he’s caused me, Friedrich. By the Lights, I’ve never had a boy so determined to thwart me.”

“Oh, dear.” Friedrich clucked his tongue. “Has the little savage been domesticated?”

“Tamed, anyway.”

“Well, I certainly hope he rewards your investment. How long is his contract?”

“Five years. I would that it were longer, but, well.”

“Oh, there are ways to keep a debt slave,” said Friedrich, stroking the fork of his beard.

“Tell me,” said Boq eagerly.

“Loan me Bridda for one of my parties and I might.”

Boq chuckled. “Such a haggler, Friedrich,” he said, wagging a finger.

It took all Asher’s will not to flinch when Boq turned to him. He made a hand gesture, the first one Asher had been taught.

_Kneel._

Fear and hatred warred within Asher. He wanted to spit in Boq’s face. To bend the stubby sausages of his fingers backwards until the bones snapped.

But then he thought of the overseer’s belt. Of Luca’s face when he spoke about the fuckhouse. He thought of Da’s debt and Simon swinging from the noose.

Fear won. Asher forced his knees to bend him down.

From down here, Asher could see the spiderwebs in the corners. He could see the rip in Boq’s slipper where his crusted yellow toe had worn through the silk. If he was any lower, he’d be on eye level with the ant marching a crumb across the floor.

“Good boy,” said Boq, voice velvety with satisfaction. “You see, Friedrich? Even this feral urchin can be tamed.”

 _I’m stone,_ Asher told himself. _I’m steel, I’m lead, I feel nothing._

Then Vassandro swept in and Asher felt everything, all at once, in a wave so strong it threatened to drag him under.

“Ah, our leading man arrives,” said Boq, folding his hands over his stomach. “I’ve been looking forward to this show all week.”

Vassandro was wearing his freeman’s clothes. He gave no indication that he saw Boq and Friedrich at all. His gaze was for Asher alone, and it burned like a fever.

“Well, you’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you,” he said quietly.

A tremor curled down Asher’s spine. He’d almost forgotten that there were flecks of gold in Vassandro’s eyes. Like stars reflected in deep green water.

It wasn’t until Boq cleared his throat that Asher remembered he was supposed to speak. He fumbled for the line.

“Uh—welcome to the Harlequin. Can I take your stuff? Sir?”

Boq and Friedrich snorted with laughter. Asher curled his nails into his palms. His cheeks were on fire.

But Vassandro didn’t laugh. As though guiding him through the choreography of a dance, Vassandro helped Asher take his coat, his boots, without seeming to be helping at all.

Asher could feel the heat of Vassandro’s skin through the thin linen of his shirt. Like he’d brought the sun with him.

“What sort of services do you provide here?” asked Vassandro, cupping Asher’s face.

“Anything you want,” Asher blurted. “Sir.”

A smile flickered over Vassandro’s face, softening the sharp edges. He bent down and pressed their lips together.

The room fell away. There was only Vassandro in the world.

Vassandro licked into Asher’s mouth. Asher shivered; he pressed closer. Vassandro made a rumbling noise of pleasure. He tasted of some unfamiliar spice that warmed Asher from the inside. He pushed his tongue against Vassandro’s, seeking more.

Vassandro pulled back, chuckling at Asher’s noise of protest.

“Lovely creature,” he murmured, brushing their lips together. “What else can that sweet mouth do?”

Strange how easy it was now for Asher to kneel. How natural it felt to pull open the lacing of Vassandro’s trousers and wrap his hand around the silken heat inside.

Vassandro firmed in his hand. A thrill of power ran like lightning down Asher’s center line.

He kissed the head of Vassandro’s cock and felt it jump against his lips. The taste of spice was richer here, more concentrated. Asher ached to slip his hand down his waistcloth. He wasn’t hard, but he knew it would only take a squeeze to bring himself to full mast.

Instead he licked down the big vein that throbbed on the underside of Vassandro’s cock. The skin was smooth, glossy almost, and flushed a deep chestnut brown.

Asher scraped his teeth along the crease of Vassandro’s thigh just to hear his breath catch.

Vassandro reached down and pulled Asher up, toppling him over onto the bed in one fluid movement. Asher’s legs fell open of their own accord and Vassandro knelt between. He leaned in to lick the taste of himself from Asher’s lips.

Asher wiggled impatiently. He lifted his hips so that Vassandro could pull his waistcloth away.

A sharp pain on his inner thigh made Asher hiss. Vassandro had pinched him.

“Careful,” Vassandro whispered, casting a meaningful look at Asher’s half-hard cock.

Because Asher had forgotten. He’d forgotten about Boq and Friedrich. He’d forgotten that he was a slave. He’d forgotten that this was pretend.

Vassandro took Asher’s wrist and kissed it. He turned his face into Asher’s open hand. Asher felt the flutter of his lashes. The damp seam of his lids.

Asher understood. Vassandro was apologizing. He’d forgotten, too.

“It seems our performers are deviating from the script, Gregori,” said Friedrich mildly. “My Vassandro isn’t usually one to improvise. Your boy must be quite the muse.”

Vassandro’s grip on Asher’s wrist went slack. Asher’s hand fell away. Beneath, Vassandro’s eyes were voids in his perfect, expressionless face.

“Vasssandro?” Asher whispered.

But it was like Vassandro hadn’t heard him. When he pushed Asher’s thighs apart, his touch was neither rough nor gentle. Just one body handling another.

Asher knew what was going to happen next. He was ready—had been readied, with awful thoroughness, by Luca and Bagoas. Still, the first burning ingress made bursts of white bloom on his eyelids. He tossed his head to the side and glared at the wall through the wet that he would never call tears.

Vassandro worked himself in, slowly but relentlessly, until he was fully seated within Asher.

Distantly, Asher noted that Luca had been right. It was easier now. His body was learning how to give way.

A light touch on his cheek made him flinch. Vassandro leaned down, lips against Asher’s ear.

“My angel,” he murmured. And then, voice breaking: “My treasured one.”

Asher turned to look at him. “Vassandro—”

The slap took his breath away. Vassandro reared up over him, face twisted with hate. He pinned Asher’s knees to the bed and drove into him.

Pain lanced down Asher’s spine. He felt it in his chest, his throat. Like his insides were on fire and he was choking on the smoke.

“Stop,” he gasped, pounding Vassandro’s shoulders with the heels of his palms. “Gods, _stop_ —get off me, you bastard—”

“I want you to hurt,” Vassandro snarled. “Suffer for me, whore.”

Before Asher could bite out a retort, Vassandro dragged his cock out of him. Whatever he might’ve said dissolved into a wordless cry of pain. Vassandro threw Asher onto his knees, shoving his head into the covers. Asher bit down, squeezing his eyes shut against the agony of the cock pushing back in.

“You love it,” Vassandro panted. “Take it all—”

“Fuck you!” Asher shouted, voice muffled into the bed.

He threw his shoulder back, trying to buck Vassandro off. Vassandro caught his arm and twisted it. He had to use his full weight to pin Asher down. Asher squirmed futilely, half-mad with pain and spite.

“Work with me, damn you,” Vassandro hissed under his breath.

_Not fucking likely._

Asher managed to work his arm loose. He threw an elbow into Vassandro’s side. It connected with a satisfying thud. Vassandro was thrown half off him. He muffled a curse.

Asher tried to push himself up, but Vassandro grabbed the back of his neck and shoved him back down.

“What a stirring drama, Gregori,” said Friedrich. “These performances aren’t usually so inspired.”

Abruptly, Vassandro’s weight lifted. He pulled Asher up by his hips, shifting the angle of the cock inside him. It felt—well, not _good_ , but better at least. Less like a club buried in his gut.

Vassandro ran a soothing hand down Asher’s back. Asher felt Vassandro lay a kiss between his shoulders and had to turn his face into the covers so that he wouldn’t scream.

 _I’m stone,_ he told himself. _I’m a wall, a fort, I feel nothing._

Vassandro hooked his arm around Asher’s waist and rolled them over so that Asher was forced to straddle him. It must’ve been like dragging a corpse. Vassandro groaned with the effort. Asher was glad. He hoped Vassandro pulled a muscle that would pinch when he breathed.

“Don’t just sit on him, boy,” said Boq irritably. “Go on, move your ass.”

Asher wanted to tell Boq exactly where he could shove it. He might have, too, if Vassandro hadn’t squeezed his hip. A warning.

_If you live, you’ll get to see your family again._

Asher gritted his teeth. He forced himself to move up and down.

There was a crack where the wall met the ceiling. Asher imagined it getting wider and wider until it swallowed the room. The block. The city. He imagined the nothingness within him opening like a hole, so dense with gravity that it turned the world inside out.

This time when Vassandro threw him down on the bed, Asher was glad. He could go limp, lifeless. He could let himself slip into the nothingness and float, weightless, in its consuming dark.

“Take it,” Vassandro muttered, snapping his hips. “Take it all.”

Asher lay there and took it. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

After what could’ve been a minute or a year, Vassandro pulled his cock out and came. Warm sperm spattered Asher’s back and ass. It was disgusting. Like having a chamber pot emptied on him. Asher had to dig his teeth into his wrist so that he wouldn’t be sick.

Vassandro collapsed onto his elbows beside Asher, panting for breath. His sweaty curls hung over his face. Hunched over, with his head down and his shoulders trembling, he almost looked as if he was in pain.

Asher started at the sound of flesh on flesh. Friedrich and Boq, applauding.

“What do you think, Gregori?”

“The overture was certainly more entertaining than the finale," said Boq. "The boy hardly has an ear for dialogue—all that foul language! And did you notice that he didn't offer to clean the client? Unacceptable."

“Protocol can be taught," said Friedrich, waving his hand. "At the end of the whip, if need be. But with a face like that, the boy is sure to be an earner. There, you see? He’s even prettier when he pouts.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Boq sighed. “Still, after two months, I’d hoped for a better performance.”

“That little barbarian has made you greedy. You won’t recoup your investment a thousandfold on _every_ boy.”

“Wise as always, Friedrich.”

“One can’t be in the game as long as I have without learning to take the long view on these things.”

Vassandro shifted to kneel over Asher, blocking Boq and Friedrich from sight. Bagoas detached himself from the wall and handed Vassandro a towel. At the touch of rough fabric against his skin, Asher flinched.

“Was any of it ever real?” Asher whispered, too tired even to feel shame at the way his voice broke.

Vassandro sighed. “Oh, love. Nothing that happens in this place is real.” He smoothed a stray curl back from Asher’s forehead. “But you, my fighter, my fiery one—well, you never could pretend.”

“Come, Vassandro,” said Friedrich, snapping his fingers as if to call a dog. “We have other appointments.”

Vassandro pressed his fingertips to Asher’s cheek, light as a kiss. Then he was gone.

Asher lay on the bed with his legs kicked up on the wall. The sheets had been changed and he’d scrubbed every inch of his skin in water so hot he still smarted, but still, he could smell Vassandro.

It had been Simon’s girl who turned him in. Anita. She worked at the bar where Asher’s brothers liked to drink. She was soft and sweet and quick with a joke, and her plump shoulders were dusted with freckles. When Asher’s brothers robbed the lord’s house, Simon took a necklace for Anita from the lady’s box of jewels. One of the barmaids, jealous, turned Anita in to the Watch. They took her to Bridesea and broke her fingers one by one until she gave them Simon’s name.

 _It’s that girl who’s killed your brother_ , said Asher’s father after the Watch took Simon away. _She’s as good as tied the noose herself_.

Then he looked at Asher, who was trying so hard not to cry that the breath stuck in his ribs like a hiccup.

_You’d better not get played by a pretty face like your brother did, softie. I won’t own to a son who’s that much of a fool._

Asher had promised. He was a Lacey. A man. He’d never allow love to make him weak.

Asher kicked his heels against the wall. Even if Da came for him now, he didn’t deserve to be rescued. He’d let Vassandro play him like a mark. Like Anita. She let Simon love her and betrayed him. It shouldn’t have mattered how many bones the Watch broke; she should have held her tongue. That’s why Asher’s brothers had to cut it out as punishment. They went to the bar and threw Anita on the floor and prised her mouth open with Da’s knife and Asher had closed his eyes, because he was soft. Not a Lacey. Not a man. Just a weak little boy who cried over a snitching whore.

Asher wasn’t crying now. His eyes were so dry they stung.

 _You never could pretend,_ Vassandro had said. And it was true; Asher couldn’t. So Vassandro had made Asher feel things—real things—in order to show their masters what they wanted to see.

Asher couldn’t pretend, but Vassandro could. He was like Luca. A mirror. There was nothing on the other side.

The door opened. Asher turned to see Luca and Bagoas. He could tell now when Luca had just come from a client. He wore his body loosely, like a borrowed coat.

“I’m pleased to announce that you’ve passed your final test,” said Bagoas, folding his hands into his sleeves. “Words I thought I’d never say. Congratulations, Asher. Your training is over. You’ll be moved into the dormitory and begin work tomorrow in the public room.”

“Hooray,” said Asher, staring up at the ceiling.

Bagoas sighed. “I suppose I was a fool to hope that training would improve your temperament. Do try not to scowl at the patrons like that. I doubt they’ll find it charming.”

Bagoas swept out of the room in a flourish of robe. Luca started to follow, but paused in the doorway, worrying his lip between his teeth.

Then, in a rush, he said, “You shouldn’t talk to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In the dormitory,” said Luca, pulling at his braid. “The other boys won’t like you if they think you’re my friend.”

He was just as earnest as he’d been on Asher’s first night at the Harlequin. Just as pathetic. Asher hadn’t wanted to hurt Luca then. He’d thought that it would be like hurting a child.

But Luca wasn’t a child. He’d held Asher down for Boq. He’d forced him to put his mouth on the overseer. Luca had let Vassandro fuck him and pretended to like it. And worst of all, worst of anything, he’d made Asher care about him when he should’ve only ever cared about himself.

“I’m not your friend,” said Asher.

Luca went very still. He gazed at Asher with eyes so huge they seemed to swallow his face.

“Oh,” said Luca softly. Then, pulling himself together, “Of course not. I thought—I’m stupid. I’m sorry. Please forget I said anything.”

“That’ll be easy,” said Asher, turning back to the ceiling. “You never say anything worth remembering.”

Luca made a small noise. The sound someone made when they had the air knocked out of them. If Asher wasn’t listening, he might not have heard it at all.

He heard the door close. The _snick_ of the lock.

Asher was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...please don't kill me for updating Interlude instead of TGB Part II. This chapter's been nipping at my brain for a while now, and I needed a mini-break from the main story. I'd like to use NaNoWriMo to finish Interlude as well as the next stretch of TGB, so you'll probably see new chapters in the near future.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I promise things will look up in the next chapter. (But not, like, too far up.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the rape of a minor (Asher) and dub-con between a minor and an adult.

In the house on Cherry Street, Asher and his brothers shared a rented room under the eaves. Someone was always nursing a knot on their head from where they’d bumped, or been bumped, against the beams.

Da was home as little as he could help it. He had a woman on Quay Street and a woman on Butcher’s Lane, and they didn’t know about each other or about Asher and his brothers either. That’s the way Da liked it. He had a lot of little lives all over Lyonesse, and he never let the edges touch.

One room was too small to contain seven Lacey boys. They spilled out the windows onto the roof, sliding down the drainpipe into the alleys and backyards flapping with laundry and chickens. They ran in the streets with the stray dogs and stray children. They stole when they were hungry, or bored, or because Da told them to. Laceys answered to no law but their own.

Until the Harlequin, Asher had never met a lock he couldn’t break. He’d never been in a room he couldn’t leave. When Bagoas took him from the training room and led him through a warren of shabby corridors, Asher tried to case the joint like Simon had taught him. But there were no exit points. The floors met the walls met the ceilings like the sides of a box. There wasn’t a crack big enough for Asher to wiggle through.

The dormitory had been a storage cellar once. Asher could feel the damp of earth under the floorboards. The chatter of boys’ voices rang off the low ceiling, only to fall silent when they saw Bagoas in the doorway. Asher felt dozens of pairs of eyes looking him over. Evaluating, calculating. Deciding where he fit into their hierarchy.

Asher set his jaw. If anyone so much as breathed at him funny, he was going to pound them through the floorboards and into the dirt beneath.

Bagoas’s long-fingered hand closed on Asher’s shoulder.

“Don’t go buying trouble,” he murmured. Then, loud enough for the other boys to hear, “Evening service starts in two hours. I expect to see you all showered— _thoroughly_ —and prepared— _thoroughly_. If the master receives another complaint about a client finding hair on a boy where hair shouldn’t be, rations will be cut for all of you.”

This announcement was met with groans quickly silenced by the lethal arch of Bagoas’s eyebrow. He departed, leaving Asher to wither under the scrutiny of the other boys.

Asher tried not to see the slight, pale figure crouched against the far wall. All the other boys were clumped together in threes and fours, but no one sat with Luca. No one was even close. There was a wide circle around him, as if he had something that nobody wanted to catch.

_The other boys won’t like you if they think you’re my friend…_

Asher heard a titter of laughter. He followed it to a boy with raven-black hair who sat straight-backed, imperious. He flicked an assessing eye over Asher, then turned to the boy next to him and whispered something in his ear. The other boy stifled a laugh.

 _Ignore them_ , Asher told himself. Who cared what a bunch of whores thought of him, anyway?

Keeping his gaze just a little above their heads, Asher sauntered to the nearest corner and settled down. He sat like Simon used to, with one leg outflung and the other to his chest, arm slung over his knee. All he needed now was a nice fat plug of smokeleaf and he’d be in business.

A shadow fell over him. Asher looked up to see a snub-nosed boy with cowlicked sandy-brown hair. Docktown was all over him, from the set of his jaw to his outthrust chest.

“You’re one of the Lacey Boys, aren’t you?” the boy asked.

“That’s right.” Asher squinted at him. “Didn’t you used to run with Barney Brixham’s crew?”

“Yeah, ’til my mam lost her job at the laundry and couldn’t make payment on our debt.” The boy squatted next to Asher. “Kaspar Meeks,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Asher Lacey,” said Asher, shaking it. “How long’ve you got?”

“Two years. When mam sold me to the debt broker, I thought my contract would be bought by a slaughterhouse or a chimneymaster. I wouldn’t’ve minded that.” Kaspar shrugged and tried to smile. “Anyway, I’ve only got six months left now. How about you?”

“Five years.”

Kaspar pulled a face. “That’s rough.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause—Kaspar thinking about the years behind him, maybe, while Asher tried not to think of all the years ahead. Then Kaspar jerked his chin at Luca.

“The barbarian helped train you?” he asked in a low voice.

“You know him?” said Asher, surprised.

“Everybody knows everybody here,” said Kaspar. “Not much else to do but get in each other’s’ business.” He cut a glance at Luca. “I heard he’s touched in the head. Is it true?”

Asher had to squelch a surge of indignation on Luca’s behalf. _We’re not friends_ , he reminded himself. Still, he wasn’t about to give Kaspar an answer, even if Luca probably was touched in the head. He shrugged.

Kaspar pulled a face. “Well, it certainly doesn’t look like he’s got a lot going on upstairs,” he muttered.

Asher had to admit that he had a point. Luca sat huddled with his legs to his chest, cheek on his knees, gazing at the wall. If not for the rise and fall of his bony back, Asher might’ve thought he was dead.

“Why’s everyone ignoring him?” Asher asked.

Kaspar nodded at the black-haired boy. “You see him? That’s Tris. He’s on top of things around here, after Bridda. That’s Bridda, with the curls.”

The boy Tris had whispered to. With his glossy ringlets and lush, romantic features, he bore an aching resemblance to Vassandro.

“He’s beautiful,” said Asher, trying to ignore the sudden tightness in his chest.

“Yeah, Bridda’s the top earner in the house. Tris is second. But it’s Tris you’ve got to watch out for.”

As Kaspar spoke, Tris made a show of tossing his hair over his shoulder so that the light caught on its bluish glints. He was the palest person Asher had ever seen, with chalk-white skin pulled tight over the sharp bones of his face. His eyes were such a clear, light blue that at angles they looked transparent.

“You don’t want to get on his bad side, trust me,” said Kaspar in a low voice. “If he decides he hates you, everyone will start ignoring you, too.”

All at once, a hush fell over the room. The quiet of small animals with a predator in their midst. Asher turned to see the overseer standing in the doorway. Fear trailed cold fingers down his spine.

But the overseer ignored him. He ignored all of them. He locked his gaze on Luca and crooked a finger.

Luca went to him as though drawn on invisible strings. Before the door shut behind them, Asher saw the overseer’s hand close on the back of Luca’s neck.

“Does that happen a lot?” Asher asked Kaspar, trying not to sound like he cared.

Kaspar snorted. “Oh, yeah. Everyone knows that the barbarian is Sark’s bitch. I heard he gets extra rations for spreading for him.”

Asher frowned. Extra rations? That couldn’t be right. Luca was too careful with food. He was as hungry as Asher; he’d just gotten used to it. If Sark was slipping Luca more than his portion, Luca definitely wasn’t eating it himself.

But maybe he was leaving the extra food on Ganymene’s altar. That made sense. It was the sort of thing a superstitious whore would do.

“He’s nothing but a suck-up, anyway.”

The words sounded like they came from someone else. It took Asher a moment to realize that he was the one who’d said them.

“Yeah,” said Kaspar, mouth twisting. “Fucking brownnoser.”

He dragged his thumb across his cheek. Asher knew the gesture well. In Docktown, the gangs marked snitches by slashing them from mouth to ear.

“Wish we could show him how we treat finks back home,” said Kaspar darkly. “I hear you Lacey boys are tough as anything.”

Asher thought of his brothers throwing Anita down on the tavern floor. They’d laughed about it after, how she’d bled out from her mouth like a pig. Was that what it was to be tough? To cut a person out of the world and laugh? Asher didn’t think he would ever be tough, not like his brothers.

But maybe it was enough to be cold—so cold he could lie and betray and need no one but himself. Cold like Vassandro. Asher imagined a diamond-hard core of ice at his center. But when he looked inside himself, he saw instead a hot seething well of feelings on the verge of boiling over.

Grief. (Don’t think about Simon.) Fear. ( _Be a man, Asher_.) Resentment. (Better.) Rage. (Yes.) Hate. So much hate, wave after wave of it. Hate burned behind Asher’s eyes. He could taste it when he swallowed.

With the rational part of his mind, Asher knew that he didn’t hate Luca. Not really. But Luca was a vessel. He was something Asher could pour these feelings into, the ones too big and hot to hold inside himself. If Asher tried to contain them, he would burn up from the inside. He would smother to death in this prison, and only his body would go on living. When the doors opened five years from now, there would be nothing left of Asher to set free.

The first man who bought Asher on his first night in the public room wasn’t ugly. Asher had thought that men only came to places like this if they couldn’t get it without paying. But this punter—“Winston,” he said, following Asher up the stairs—probably could’ve found someone to fuck him for free.

Then Winston pulled his trousers down and Asher understood. He had a cock the size of a mushroom cap over balls as small as marbles. The nub of flesh twitched as Asher stared at it.

Winston cleared his throat.

“I know it’s…”

“Yeah.” Asher looked away. “What d’you want me to do with it? Sir?”

“Um,” said Winston, blinking rapidly. “If you could—I mean, the other boys here, they um. They s-suck it? And sit on it, and, um. Tell me h-how big it is?”

Asher swallowed.

“Sure,” he said, in a voice that sounded like someone else’s. “I can do that.”

But he couldn’t. It wasn’t the sucking—that was fine, he could close his eyes and pretend he was with a girl. But grinding down on Winston’s lap brought unwelcome memories of Vassandro. And when Asher tried to talk, to say what Winston wanted, he sounded like a bad actor reciting half-remembered lines.

Asher didn’t know whether or not Winston came. His body jerked—and then in the next moment he was shoving Asher off his lap. Winston dressed in short, curt motions, doing up the fastenings of his clothes as if they’d insulted him.

Voice tight, he said, “That wasn’t very convincing.”

Asher flushed. He knew that. Of course he knew that. But he’d _tried,_ damn it. He shouldn’t have to feel ashamed for being bad at something he hadn’t wanted to do in the first place.

“It’s not my job to convince you you’ve got a great big cock, all right?” he blurted.

Winston’s hands stilled. Asher was suddenly aware of how naked he was. Of the weight of the collar around his neck.

“Actually, that is your job,” said Winston quietly.

Winston didn’t slam the door. It closed after him with a quiet _snick_ , like the lid of a box.

There was no point going back downstairs. Asher lay down, kicked his feet up on the wall, and waited for Bagoas.

He didn’t take long. When the door banged open, Asher didn’t resist when Bagoas grabbed hold of his ear. He let himself be dragged down the back stairs and through the passageway to the overseer’s quarters.

When the overseer saw Asher, he rolled his eyes. “Already?”

“We had to refund his first client,” said Bagoas, shoving Asher forward.

“He wanted me to tell lies about his todger!” Asher protested as the overseer grabbed his arm. “I’m an honest person!”

The overseer yanked down Asher’s waistcloth and threw him belly-down over the table.

“Nobody wants an honest whore,” said the overseer, picking up the strap.

Asher clenched his jaw. _Don’t make a sound,_ he ordered himself.

But he couldn’t help it. The first _crack_ across his thighs drove him up onto his toes, yelping. The overseer shoved him back down with a hand on the small of his back (like he’d shoved Luca down on the bed, but no, Asher wasn’t going to think about Luca), and there was another _crack_ , and another, each wringing a cry from Asher’s throat. By the tenth he was sobbing, dry-eyed and furious.

“Are you going to behave?” asked Bagoas. He sounded almost bored.

Asher’s jaw was still clenched, for all the good it had done him.

He ground out, “Yes.”

Asher behaved for the second man. He behaved for the third. He went on behaving, but stopped counting the men. It didn’t matter how many there were. It would just go on and on until it was over, and there was nothing he could do.

After, the boys were herded into the showers. Asher understood now why Luca always scrubbed himself until his skin was raw. He could smell the men on him. He could feel their hands. Sex was burned into him like—

No. Not like a brand.

The water that wound through the clanking pipes was the temperature of tea left too long on the table, and the dormitory was an icebox. Asher’s damp skin froze at once into goosepimples. He had to grit his teeth to keep them from chattering. On bitter nights in the attic, he and his brothers had slept tumbled together in a pile to share warmth. He’d never been this cold before.

And _hungry._ Fields of hell, he’d almost gotten used to the constant gnawing ache in his belly, but after hours and hours of—of—well, he was hungrier than usual, anyway. He’d never thought how exhausting it was, the work whores did. The work they were made to do. Gods, the things Asher had been made to do—

No. He wasn’t going to think about it.

For supper (breakfast? what time was it?), the house slaves doled out stale bread with bowls of broth so thin it looked like spit in water. Yawning boys dragged themselves into a queue, their positions along the line organized according to a hierarchy Asher refused to learn. He was ready to bully his way out of last place, but the other low-ranked boys dropped their eyes and stepped back of their own accord.

 _Because I’m debt-bound_ , Asher realized. The boys in line behind him were as green as he was, but they were branded. Life slaves. Like Luca.

Who was last in line. Asher tried not to care, but it didn’t make _sense._ Luca was an earner, one of Boq’s favorites; his clients were important, and he took them upstairs, in a private room. He should be at the front of the line with the other high-ranked boys. Instead even the lowest slaves shoved ahead of him. And he let himself be shoved, yielding his place with the same infuriating passivity that he did everything.

Asher tried to see Luca through Kaspar’s eyes. He had to admit that Luca looked—well, not normal. He stood poised on the balls of his feet as if about to leap into the air, yet he held himself uncannily, inhumanly still. Only his fingers moved, twisting in his hair.

With a stab of unease, Asher realized that Luca’s lips were moving too. He was talking to himself without making any sound at all.

Kaspar elbowed Asher. “Told you he was touched.”

As they ate, Kaspar talked about Docktown. He talked about all the things he was going to do when he was free. Asher watched Kaspar’s mouth and thought about what it would look like with all the teeth punched in.

Once they’d licked their bowls clean, the boys queued up to exchange them for blankets and pallets. Again, Luca was last in line. Asher was far enough back himself that the only blankets left had been motheaten into lace. His pallet was worn so thin that he could feel the cracks in the floorboard when he lay down.

Asher tried balling up the blanket to use as a pillow, but that left him exposed to the freezing damp. Wrapping himself in the blanket cut the cold, but then there was nothing but lumpy sackcloth between his head and the hard floor.

Long after all the other boys had gone to sleep, Asher was still tossing and turning and swearing under his breath. Exhaustion and pain warred in him, one demanding sleep while the other kept him awake. He _hurt._ The welts on his legs throbbed and stung in turns. Deeper aches settled in the marrow of his back, his hips, the base of his spine. He was sore in places he didn’t want to think about. And there was nothing else to think about except tomorrow, which would be just like today, only with the distinct possibility of it being worse.

Asher had just managed to carve out a quiet place in the misery when a shuffling noise startled him to alertness. His eyes flew open to see a figure silhouetted in the doorway. Thin, graceful, head ducked as though expecting to be hit. Asher didn’t need to see his face to know it was Luca—rule-worshiping, goody-goody Luca, creeping out of the dormitory like a thief.

This clearly wasn’t the first time he’d done it, either. Luca made his way down the corridors with swift, silent assurance. Asher wouldn’t have been able to keep up with him if not for a lifetime’s experience sneaking in and out of places where he wasn’t supposed to be. The only light was that of the occasional candle set in a wax-covered sconce; it was easy to keep to the dark seam along the wall and follow Luca’s shadow.

The shadow jigged crazily when Luca stopped to take a candle from its sconce. He crossed the hallway, stopped in front of a door—Asher remembered Kaspar telling him that this was the room where the dancers practiced—and slipped inside. Asher caught the door just as it was about to close.

Through the crack, he watched Luca set down his candle and crouch beside it. The blanket he wore around his shoulders was in even worse shape than Asher’s. Pulling the blanket tighter with one hand, Luca ran his fingers along the seam of a floorboard—and then, in one practiced movement, prised it up. He reached into the hole beneath and brought something up.

Asher must’ve made a noise. Luca whirled around, clutching the thing to his chest.

“Is that a _book?”_ demanded Asher, incredulous. His brothers had stolen books before; he knew what they looked like.

Luca shrank into himself, hugging the book tightly, as if he was trying to press it into his body.

“You f-followed me?” he whispered.

Asher pushed through the door and shut it behind him. Enclosed in the flickering circle of candlelight, Luca looked like a small animal caught in a trap. Did that make Asher the hunter? No, he didn’t like that idea. He crouched too, so they were nearly of a height. Luca still looked wary, but his grip on the book loosened slightly.

“You can read?” Asher asked. And, when Luca nodded, “Who taught you?”

“Nobody.” Then, softly, “A boy.”

Asher had never heard of a pleasure slave being taught to read, never mind a barbarian. Until now, he would’ve said it was in the same order of impossibility as clocks running backward or pigs sprouting wings.

“Why would a boy teach you to read?” Asher demanded.

The question came out harsher than he’d intended. For a moment, Asher thought Luca wasn’t going to answer. He was stroking the cover of his book as though it was the face of someone he loved.

“He said that he wanted me to have somewhere to go when he couldn’t be with me,” Luca said at last. “A place I could escape.”

The longing in his voice made Asher’s breath catch. He’d never seen this expression on Luca’s face before. He looked as young as—well, as young as he was.

“What happened to the boy?” Asher asked, dreading the answer.

“I don’t know. My master caught us together, and—” Luca flinched, as if the memory hurt. “He’s alive, though. I know he is. I’d feel it if he died.”

They were both silent for a moment, caught up in their own thoughts. Then Luca nodded at the welts on Asher’s legs.

“The strap?” he asked, wincing in sympathy.

“Yeah. Fucking client. He had this dinky little cock and he wanted me to go on about how he’s hung like a racehorse.”

“Oh, Mr. Winston? But he’s so kind!” said Luca earnestly. “And interesting, too—he’s traveled all over the world with the Diplomatic Service. As far as Irjivi, even. Once he brought me back a bracelet of bells. Master Boq took it, of course, but I can remember the sound the bells made.”

“How do you do it?” Asher blurted out.

“Do what?”

“Smile for them and mean it.”

Absently, Luca trailed his hand over the candle, making light dance on the wall.

“Maybe it’s easier if you don’t have anything else,” he said. “I’m not like you, Asher. I was born a slave. I’ve been a whore most of my life. And besides—” He took a breath. “Besides, I don’t have a home to go back to. I won’t see my family again. There’s no one waiting for me on the other side of the door.”

“What about the boy who taught you to read?”

“He promised he’d find me,” said Luca, more a question than an answer. He paused, as though listening to something Asher couldn’t hear. “But he shouldn’t try,” Luca went on, voice suddenly dull. “He could have better than me, a thousand times better. Anyway, I deserve to be here. This is where I belong.”

Asher didn’t like when Luca talked like that. It was creepy. Instead of listening, he examined the book. Even he could tell it was cheap; the cover had been torn away, and the pages were cracked and freckled. Letters marched across the page like ants. There were words Asher recognized— _No Trespassing; Do Not Enter; WANTED_ —but only as familiar shapes. He doubted any of them would appear in Luca’s book. It gave him a funny feeling to think that these pages held a whole world that Luca could enter and he couldn’t.

“Why do you like those stupid things, anyway?” he asked, trying not to sound as though he cared.

Luca thought for a moment. “They’re like windows,” he said. “You can see through to other places. Other peoples’ lives. You can pretend…” He bit his lip. “Well. You can pretend.”

Tears stung Asher’s eyes, so abrupt and unexpected that he almost couldn’t blink them back in time.

“I miss windows,” he said.

Luca squeezed his ankle. “You’ll see them again, I promise.” He hesitated. Then, “You’re friends with Kaspar?”

Asher shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about Kaspar.

“That’s good,” said Luca, sounding relieved. “Kaspar’s tough. Nobody messes with him.”

Whatever reply Asher might’ve made was swallowed up by a yawn. He tried to battle it down, but another yawn surged up and defeated him.

“You should sleep,” said Luca, scolding.

“It’s too cold.”

“Take my blanket.”

“Then _you’ll_ be cold.”

“I’m used to it,” said Luca, pressing the blanket into his hands. “And it’ll be worse tomorrow if you’re tired, trust me.”

A laugh tore loose. “Worse,” said Asher. “Right.”

Luca’s blanket was so ragged that it felt like holding a handful of tatting. Still, the wool held the heat of Luca’s skin. When Asher wrapped the blanket round himself, it was warmer than he could’ve imagined.

“I won’t tell anyone,” said Asher. “About you reading, I mean.”

“Thank you,” said Luca, hugging the book to his chest. He’d begun to shiver, as though Asher had taken the heat from his body along with the blanket.

Before Asher had time to dwell on that, Luca said in a rush, “If you need anything—food, or medicine, or—well, anything. The other boys don’t have to know.”

A lump rose in Asher’s throat. He swallowed it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. Thanks.”

Back in the dormitory, Asher lay on his pallet fuming with anger. He knew it wasn’t anger really, but the sort of confusion that was anger’s nearest cousin.

 _Why_ did Luca make it so easy for people to take things from him? And _why_ was he so infuriatingly, relentlessly kind to Asher, even when Asher insulted and ignored him? It seemed nothing could stop Luca from giving to Asher—giving and giving while expecting anything in return. It didn’t make _sense._ Da said that charity was for fools, but Luca wasn’t a fool, no matter what everyone said. He was clever. He was _good_. He cared about Asher more than anyone had since Simon. Asher knew that caring was supposed to make people weak, but what if Luca’s weakness wasn’t weakness at all? What if it was a kind of strength, different from anything Asher had known before?

Asher lay with that question a long time. He didn’t know when he fell asleep, only that he was being pursued through endless corridors by a formless, unnamable dread. There was a door at the end, if he could reach it in time. But the candles burned lower and lower, flickering out as he passed. Just as he made it to the door, the last candle went out. Asher plunged into an endless vault of night where dread embraced him like a lover.

Days passed. Weeks, months. Asher didn’t know how many. They all slurred together like Da’s words when he drank. It was horrible how normal everything became, while still being horrible in new ways all the time.

The night Vassandro came for him began like all the others. Asher wedged himself into the worst-lit corner of the public room and scowled at any punter who glanced his way. When a shadow fell over him, he glared up, ready to bare his teeth.

But it wasn’t a punter. It was Vassandro. He wore his freeman’s clothes, the smart coat pulled up to hide his collar and his hair scraped back into a tight knot in the style of a student. Without makeup, he looked startlingly young.

“Are you engaged?” asked Vassandro.

Mutely, Asher shook his head.

“Well, you are now. Come along.”

Over Vassandro’s shoulder, Asher saw Bagoas watching them, his mouth set in a grim line of disapproval. Still, he didn’t stop Asher from following Vassandro.

The moment the door closed behind them, Asher demanded, “What are you doing here?”

Vassandro pulled the ribbon from his hair, spilling toffee-colored curls down his back. He gave Asher a satirical look over his shoulder.

“I’m a very good pet,” said Vassandro. “It amuses my master to allow me off the leash from time to time.”

He stripped off his coat. Beneath, he wore a white silk vest and breeches tailored to fit him to the skin. A parody of nobleman’s clothes. Asher wondered if that was old Fredrich’s idea of a joke.

“What do you want?” Asher asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

Vassandro sat on the bed—not lounging, but slouched on the edge with such inelegance that worry twisted like a knife in Asher’s chest.

“I’ve been asking myself that same question,” said Vassandro, attempting a smile. He reached out his hand. “I think I might find an answer if you came a little closer.”

Against all logic, Asher found himself drawn to that hand with the irresistible force of a magnet. It closed around his wrist, guiding him gently but firmly to sit on the bed.

This close, Asher could feel the static field of life that crackled over Vassandro’s skin. He could smell the scented oil daubed on his collarbone, and under that, the rich, blood-quickening scent that was Vassandro’s own.

Vassandro ghosted his fingers over Asher’s cheek. Asher jerked away.

“I’m not some toy for you to play with when it suits you and put away when it doesn’t,” he snapped.

“Oh, darling,” Vassandro sighed, “that’s all any of us are.”

“Bullshit,” said Asher fiercely. “We’re people. I’m a person. You are, too.”

For a moment, Vassandro looked stunned. Then he gave a soft chuckle, half to himself.

“Well, you’re right about one thing, Asher. You aren’t my toy. Nor anyone else’s, for that matter.”

“What am I, then?”

“You are fire itself.”

This time when Vassandro touched his cheek, Asher didn’t pull away. He let Vassandro turn his face in order to brush his lips over Asher’s clenched jaw. Feeling the quiver of tension there, Vassandro made a noise that was less a laugh than a sob.

“Do you hate me?” Vassandro whispered.

Asher closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good. My heart would break if you ever stopped fighting.”

“Gerald—”

“Shh.” Vassandro pressed a finger to Asher’s lips. “Lay back, love.”

Asher did, helplessly. He clutched at Vassandro’s hands like a child.

“What are you going to do?” he whispered.

“Something very selfish.” Vassandro kissed his forehead. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it.”

Asher did like it. When Vassandro’s mouth closed around his cock, pleasure jolted through him, so intense that it was almost indistinguishable from pain. Last time had been an indulgence; tonight they were both ruled by need. Asher thrust up, frantic, and Vassandro met each thrust, the liquid passage of his throat opening, welcoming, inviting Asher in. His own hand was a blur between his legs. _He wants it,_ Asher thought—and then, viciously, _So take it, take everything_ —and he was coming, coming in a great shuddering physical shock that went on and on forever until it was over and he came back to himself in a boneless, sated sprawl.

Vassandro had his face buried against Asher’s hip; he came with a muted cry. His hand stilled.

They lay there for a moment, Vassandro’s cheek pillowed on Asher’s stomach. Asher stroked the tangles from his hair. Vassandro’s eyes were closed, expression unguarded. Asher had never loved anyone more. A meteor could strike the Harlequin right now and it would have been worth it, all of it, just to be here with him.

Once he’d regained his voice, Vassandro drawled, “How rare to have an orgasm I actually enjoy.” He pressed his lips to the inside of Asher’s thigh. “Thank you, dearest.”

“For what?” asked Asher. He still hadn’t quite caught his breath. “You did all the work.”

Instead of answering, Vassandro rolled off the bed and onto his feet. As he stretched, Asher caught sight of a streak of cum drying on his breeches. Vassandro followed Asher’s eyes and chuckled.

“Thank you for ruining these ridiculous breeches, of course,” said Vassandro lightly. “Semen is the very devil to get out of silk. I expect Fredrich will be forced to retire the whole ensemble. You’ll have to remind me to look disappointed.”

“So I’ll see you again?” said Asher, not even trying to keep the eagerness from his voice.

Vassandro’s smile was more a wince. “No, love.”

Vassandro leaned down to lay a kiss on Asher’s forehead. His hair fell around them like a veil; for a moment, it was as though nothing else existed.

“This was a dream,” Vassandro murmured. “If we’re lucky, we’ll wake and not remember it.”

When Vassandro pulled away, it felt like he was taking part of Asher with him. Asher’s voice, maybe, because he appeared to have lost it completely.

Then, just as Vassandro was about to leave, Asher found he could speak after all.

“You’ll remember me,” he blurted out. “I know you will.”

The door closed behind Vassandro.

Softly, Asher said, “I’ll remember you, too.”

The rest of the night passed in a fog. Asher was so lost in thought that he forgot to scowl. He had more customers than usual; Bagoas made pleased noises once service was over. Asher ignored him. Nothing in this place was important, Bagoas especially.

Asher was pulled out of the fog by Kaspar grabbing his arm as the boys were being herded back to the dormitory. Asher blinked at him—and blinked again when he realized that Kaspar was wearing clothes. A homespun shirt tucked into breeches, showing knobby knees and elbows; his threadbare waistcoat flapped open, too small to close.

“Togs I came in with,” said Kaspar self-consciously, tugging the hem of his shirt. “Like prison, eh?”

Shoes. Kaspar was wearing shoes. Asher stared at them as if they were the most exotic things he’d ever seen.

“Mam paid the debt early,” said Kaspar, answering the question Asher hadn’t asked. “I’m going home.”

Kaspar’s collar had been taken off, leaving a band of paler skin around his neck. Strange to think that Asher had never seen that part of Kaspar’s neck before. He had the vague image of his fingers around it, squeezing.

Asher realized that Kaspar was staring at him.

“Cheers,” he forced himself to say. “Home, that’s—that’s great.”

The overseer had been standing behind Kaspar, big scarred hand on his shoulder; now he pushed Kaspar forward, clearly out of patience for goodbyes.

“I’ll remember you to your brothers, if I see them,” Kaspar called as the overseer shoved him down the hallway. “And hey, maybe your da will pay his debt off, too!”

“He will,” said Asher. “I know he will.”

But Kaspar was already gone.

When Asher returned to the dormitory, Luca was huddled in his usual spot against the far wall. Asher marched over to him, grabbed his arm, and dragged him back out into the hallway, slamming the door against the other boys’ stares.

“What are you doing?” Luca hissed. “If Tris sees—”

“Nobody talks to you,” said Asher.

Luca opened his mouth. Closed it.

“No,” he said, “they—no.”

“Why the hell not?”

Luca did that trick where he made his eyes go wide and his expression blank and stupid. Before he could say _I don’t know,_ Asher flicked his ear.

“Cut the shit. I’m not one of your clients. Tell me what happened or I’ll do something awful.”

“How awful?” said Luca warily.

“I’ll bite a punter,” said Asher, “right through his cock.”

“You will not!”

“And then I’ll chew it up,” Asher went on, inspired now, “like one of those gristly black sausages they sell under Cripplegate Bridge, and I’ll spit it out in his eye—”

“All right, all right!” Luca threw up his hands in defeat. “Lady, that really is awful. I don’t know how you come up with these things, Asher.”

“I’ve got an evil mind,” said Asher smugly.

Luca was too tactful to reply, but agreement was all over his face.

“I’m not budging ’til you tell me,” said Asher, folding his arms over his chest.

Luca took a deep breath.

“The place Master Boq bought me,” he began. Then he had to stop, take another breath, and force himself to go on, “When he bought me, I was—hurt. Dying. Master Boq paid for a doctor, and medicine—he spent so much money, more than I was worth, and he fed me even though I was useless. He said I was an _in-vest-ment_.” Luca pronounced the word carefully, like he might be tested on it. “That means I have to make up what he paid. If I don’t, he’ll sell me back. And I can’t go back there, Asher, I can’t. I’d rather die.”

Despite himself, Asher found his gaze drawn to the scars on Luca’s wrists. Asher had never asked—he hadn’t wanted to know— but now he understood. Luca would kill himself before he went back. He’d already tried. And Asher knew that Luca was far too clever to fail twice.

“I wanted so much to please Master Boq,” Luca went on. “But I was so stupid, I didn’t even think about the other boys. I didn’t think how it would look to them, me rising so fast in the rankings, getting the best clients and the master’s attention and…” His fingers were twisting in his hair, knuckles white. “But even then, it wasn’t so bad. Not like now. I still had to eat last, and no one liked me, but they’d talk to me sometimes if I shared my food. And I could sit closer by, and listen to them talk, and pretend…”

 _Pretend they were my friends_.

“Tris did something, didn’t he?” said Asher.

“It was my fault. I stole Lord Fulke. His best client. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even know he was Tris’s, I swear, he just—he came to the public room and he chose me and—and then he went on choosing me.”

“It’s not your fault some bastard wants to fuck you.”

But it was like Luca hadn’t heard. He was pulling his hair again.

“Tris gets cold when he’s angry, you know,” he said. “Cold and quiet and _focused_. It’s like watching stormclouds draw together. I tried to apologize, but he just gave me this thin little smile with teeth in it and told me I wasn’t sorry yet, but I would be.”

“Because he was planning to make you sorry.”

Luca nodded. “He has a regular, an officer in the Regiment. The officer told Tris that barbarians from Skuld set a trade ship on fire. There were children on board. Everyone died. It was horrible.”

“Oh, the _Diligent?_ ” said Asher, frowning. “Yeah, I heard about that.” The news had spread across Docktown like wildfire; people spoke of nothing else for months. “But that was three years ago! You can’t mean that no one’s talked to you in all this time?”

But of course they hadn’t. Luca shook his head, looking miserable.

“Tris told everyone that I had blood on my hands,” he said in a small voice. “He said anyone who spoke to me was a traitor.”

Rage swelled up in Asher. To relieve it, he had to stomp in a circle. He swung around to see Luca watching him with alarm.

“How the fuck is it your fault what other barbarians do?” Asher demanded.

“W-well, they’re Keld, and I’m Keld. So.”

“Did you set a trade ship on fire?”

“No.”

“Did you ask to be born a barbarian?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not your fucking fault, is it?”

“Tris said—”

“ _Tris is a fuckhead_.”

“You swear more than anybody I’ve ever met,” said Luca, torn between amusement and reproach. “Anyway. After that, it was like I was a ghost. Only not like a ghost, really, because—well, because the overseer could still see me.” Luca toed at the floor, as if he was too ashamed to meet Asher’s eyes. “That’s how I get books. When Sark took me to his room for the first time, he asked what I wanted in exchange. Of course I would’ve done whatever he wanted for nothing, but—I think he likes to pretend that I want it, too.”

“And being the overseer’s pet made everyone hate you on top of not speaking to you.”

“You shouldn’t speak to me either, Asher. If Tris sees—”

“I’m not scared of Tris.”

Right now, Asher wasn’t scared of anybody. He was too angry; there wasn’t room for him to feel anything else.

Asher pulled Luca back into the dormitory. The boys were lining up for supper. This was one of the rare nights they were being served real food: boiled potatoes with lumps of hard yellow cheese. Asher’s stomach gurgled. But no; he had a mission. He wouldn’t be distracted, not even by cheese.

Asher dragged Luca to the front of the line. Luca seemed to understand what he was going to do. He made a weak noise of protest. Asher ignored him. As far as he was concerned, Luca was not a fit protector of his own well-being, and Asher was temporarily relieving him of the responsibility.

Tris and Bridda headed the queue, as always. When Asher pushed Luca into line behind them, they turned to stare at him with mild astonishment, like toffs waylaid by beggars on their morning promenade. For the first time, Asher noticed that the brands burned into their backs had been made by the same iron, different from Luca’s but no less ornate.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” Tris asked.

He spoke with such icy disdain that a shiver ran down Asher’s spine. Luca was trying to make himself as small as possible, perhaps in the hope that if he shrank down enough he would disappear.

“He’s getting dinner,” said Asher, trying to make himself seem as big as possible to compensate.

Tris looked at Asher for the sole purpose of dismissing him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“If you’re talking to Luca, you’re talking to me.”

Tris ignored him. To Luca, he said, “Get out of line.”

Luca started to obey. Asher grabbed his arm to stop him.

“He’s not going anywhere,” said Asher, as much for Luca’s benefit as Tris’s. “He has as much right to a meal as you do.”

Asher saw what Luca meant about Tris having a smile with teeth in it. “I happen to think that barbarians who kill Solasan children don’t deserve to eat Solasan food,” he said. “What do you think, Bridda?”

“That seems fair to me,” said Bridda, crossing his arms.

Asher began to formulate a retort. Then he had a different idea. He leaned in, squinting at Tris’s hair. Tris jerked back.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Oh, nothing,” said Asher. “Just looking for grays.”

Bridda wasn’t the only one who gasped. All down the queue, boys fell silent, elbowing each other. Tris’s pale skin went pure white before flooding with color.

“How dare you!” he hissed.

“I wouldn’t squidge up my face like that if I was you,” said Asher. “At your age, it might stay that way.”

“You are nothing but an ill-mannered wharf rat.”

“And you’re nothing but a jealous old whore.”

Tris gave Asher a long, flat look. Then, quite deliberately, he turned to Luca and shoved him out of line.

Asher punched Tris in the nose.

He expected this to be the first throw of the fight, but Tris simply dropped to the floor and started screaming.

“Seriously?” said Asher to Luca over the din. “That’s it? That’s the whole fight?”

Luca had his face in his hands. He didn’t reply.

Bagoas materialized like an avenging angel. Seeing Tris streaming blood and Asher nursing his sore hand, he closed his eyes, as if it were all too much to bear. Then he shouted for Sark.

“He broke my nose!” Tris wailed.

“He didn’t break your nose, you hysterical boy,” said Bagoas, grabbing his chin. “Here, tilt your head back.”

When the overseer arrived, all Bagoas had to do was point to Asher. The overseer didn’t even have the grace to look surprised.

Asher put up no resistance as he was marched to the punishment room. He expected to be thrown over the table and strapped, or caned, as he had been in the past.

Instead the overseer tied his hands with a scratchy length of rope. He strung the rope from the crossbeams and pulled until Asher was stretched out like a prisoner on the rack.

“What’re you going to do?” Asher gasped. His arms were already burning.

“Attacking another boy is a whipping offense,” said the overseer, as though explaining that the sky was blue. Seeing Asher’s expression, he grinned. “Oho, that’s got you scared, has it? Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”

The rope cut into Asher’s wrists. He couldn’t get enough air. He took in short, spasmic mouthfuls as the overseer passed out of his line of sight. It was worse not seeing him. Asher heard the shuffle of feet; a dragging rustle. The sound of his own sobbing breaths. Then a curious non-sound as something split the air.

Asher felt the impact before he heard the crack. _Like lightning_ , he thought later. In the moment, he could think nothing. All language, all memory, everything that made him human, disappeared into a white sucking void. It was not pain. It was beyond pain.

And then it happened again.

Only after, as Luca rubbed salve into the peeled-away place that had been his back, did it occur to Asher to cry. He’d blubbered during, but that didn’t count; it was just what a body did when it was pushed beyond the ability to cope. Now Asher began to cry on purpose—out of hurt, and outrage, and astonishment that this had been done to him, and for a universe of lost pride.

Luca stroked the damp hair at Asher’s temples. He murmured soothing nonsense as Asher sobbed into the crook of his elbow. Asher thought some of the nonsense might’ve been in barbarian.

“Am I going to have scars?” Asher sniffed once the worst of the grief had passed.

“No, Sark didn’t break the skin. He knows he’s doing.”

Luca touched Asher’s shoulder. His fingers were feather-light, but still, Asher flinched.

“I was worried he might get carried away,” Luca admitted. “But this isn’t that bad, Asher, truly.”

Indignation surged. Asher was about to snap that if Luca thought it wasn’t so bad, he could take the lashes himself next time.

Then he remembered the scars on Luca’s back. If it hurt that much to be whipped without breaking the skin, how much worse was it to be flayed open?

Asher didn’t want to think about that. He was in too much pain to imagine more.

“The overseer—Sark—he said he’d go easy on me,” said Asher, scrubbing off the stream from his nose on the back of his hand.

Luca had pulled the other hand into his lap and was massaging the knots out of it.

“Really?” he said. “That’s not like him.” Then, with a shy, teasing grin, “Maybe he’s sweet on you.”

Asher rolled his eyes. “It’s you he’s sweet on, idiot.”

Luca rolled his eyes in return. This was clearly an expression he didn’t have much practice with, and he attempted it with such studied care that Asher ached with fondness alongside all the other aches.

“Sark just likes fucking me, that’s all,” said Luca.

“You don’t think anyone could like you for more than that?”

The question was supposed to be rhetorical, but Luca’s hands stilled on his.

“You do,” said Luca, not meeting his eyes. Asher heard the question as clearly as if Luca had spoken it aloud: _You do like me, don’t you?_

“Yeah, well,” Asher said, “don’t let it go to your head.”

Luca’s smile transformed him. It was like seeing a pretty piece of porcelain lit from within and realizing that it had been a lantern all along.

“I won’t,” said Luca. “Promise.”

That night they slept with their pallets pushed together and blankets layered one on top of another. Luca curled up next to Asher like a kitten. Even though the dormitory wasn’t any less cold, Asher still felt warmer than he’d been in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interlude is FINISHED! Thank you for your comments and kudos; they keep me writing.


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